^il^'!''^%: 


BV  4010  .W3 
Maclaren,  Ian,  1850 
The  cure  of  souls 


1907. 


The Cure OF  Souls 

Lyman  Beecher  Lectures  on  Preaching 

AT  Yale  University 

1896 


BY 

JOHN  WATSON,  M.A.,  D.D. 

\>,  '  A/ 

■^■^ — C-         "    '-" 


New  York 

DODD,  MEAD  &  COMPANY 

1896 


Copyright,  1896,  by 

DoDD,  Mead  &  Company 

All  Rights  Reserved 


TO  THE 

Rev.  GEORGE  P.  FISHER,    D.D,,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  and 

Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Theology 

in  Yale  University 

IN  RESPECT 
FOR  HIS  DISTINGUISHED  ATTAINMENTS 

IN    GRATITUDE 
FOR  HIS  THOUGHTFUL  KINDNESS 


PREFACE. 

It  was  the  excellent  custom  of  a  Theological 
College  which  from  time  to  time  has  sent 
forth  learned  and  brilliant  scholars  as  well  as 
many  ordinary  men,  to  invite  ministers  of  age 
and  reputation  to  inform  the  students  on  the 
practical  work  of  their  calling.  Their  addresses 
used  to  fill  the  College  with  admiration,  be- 
cause of  the  eloquence  and  distinction  of  the 
speakers,  but  one  student  they  reduced  to  de- 
spair. He  had  secretly  hoped  for  some  ac- 
count of  the  difficulties  and  dangers  which  were 
likely  to  beset  the  path  of  one  who,  like  him- 
self, represented  the  average  man. 

What  he  desired  was  never  given,  and  he 
was  in  due  course  ordained  and  entered  on  the 
work  of  the  holy  ministry.     As  he  paid  his  bit- 


viii  THE  CURE  OF  SOULS 

ter  premiums  to  experience,  it  came  to  him 
that  some  day  he  would  write  a  little  book  in 
which  he  might  be  able  to  save  some  brother 
minister  from  humiliation  and  suffering,  and 
this  he  has  now  tried  to  do  according  to  the 
measure  of  his  ability. 

It  is  not  likely,  however,  that  the  writer 
would  have  had  the  courage  of  his  intention 
had  not  the  Faculty  of  Theology  in  Yale 
University  done  him  the  unmerited  honour  of 
an  invitation  to  deliver  the  Lyman  Beecher 
lectures  on  Preaching,  and  had  accepted  from 
him  simpler  service  than  that  which  was  fit- 
tingly rendered  by  his  distinguished  predeces- 
sors in  the  lectureship. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

THE  GENESIS  OF   A   SERMON  ....  3 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  TECHNIQUE   OF   A    SERMON     .  .  .  .37 

CHAPTER  III 

PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING         .  .  .  •  65 

CHAPTER  IV 
THEOLOGY  THE  THEORY  OF   RELIGION  .  ,      lOI 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  NEW   DOGMA ',  .      I31 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE   MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION  .  .      l6r 


X  THE  CURE  OF  SOULS 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE   WORK   OF   A   PASTOR 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   PUBLIC   WORSHIP    OF    GOD       ....      245 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE   MINISTER'S  CARE   OF   HIMSELF       .  .  .27$ 


THE  GENESIS   OF  A   SERMON 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    GENESIS    OF    A    SERMON 

It  lies  upon  the  minister  of  Christ  to  care 
for  the  souls  of  his  people  from  house  to 
house  ;  to  spare  no  pains  that  divine  ser- 
vice be  beautiful  and  reverent ;  to  afford  to 
the  young  every  useful  means  of  religious 
culture  ;  to  move  his  congregation  unto 
such  good  works  as  lie  to  their  hand  :  but 
it  is  well  for  him  to  remember  that  the 
most  critical  and  influential  event  in  the 
religious  week  is  the  sermon.  History 
bears  unanimous  testimony  on  this  point. 
When  the  Evangel  ceased,  or  fell  into 
contempt,  the  Church  grew  weak  and  cor- 
rupt. When  the  Evangel  asserted  its  an- 
citent  authority,  the  Church  arose  and  put 
on  her  '  beautiful  garments.'  No  power 
in  human  experience  has  wrought    such 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

mighty  works  as  the  spoken  word  :  it  has 
beaten  down  impiety,  taught  righteous- 
ness, given  freedom  to  the  oppressed,  and 
created  nations.  Before  Knox,  armed  with 
this  sword  of  God,  hosts  fled,  and  he 
reigned  in  the  pulpit  of  St.  Giles  as  a  king 
upon  his  throne  :  and  if  you  go  into  the 
roots  of  things,  was  not  the  American  na- 
tion founded  on  brave,  wholesome  speech  ? 
It  is  the  prophet  who  has  roused  the  race 
from  ignoble  sleep,  has  fired  its  imagina- 
tion with  lofty  ideals,  has  nerved  it  for 
costly  sacrifices,  has  led  it  to  victory.  It 
is  the  prophet,  above  all,  who,  under 
Christ,  has  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
Church  in  every  land,  has  restored  her 
after  periods  of  decay,  has  filled  her  with 
courage  and  hope.  He  is  the  teacher, 
comforter,  fosterer,  defender  of  his 
brethren,  and  therefore  the  chief  office  to 
which  any  man  can  be  called  is  to  declare 
the  Will  of  God,  and  especially  the  Evan- 
gel of  Christ. 


THE   GENESIS   OF  A   SERMON 

No  one  can  exaggerate  the  opportunity 
given  to  a  preacher  when,  on  the  morning 
of  the  first  day  of  the  week,  he  ascends 
the  pulpit  and  faces  a  congregation  who 
are  gathered  in  the  name  of  Jesus,  and 
wait  to  hear  what  he  has  to  say  to  them 
concerning  the  things  which  are  unseen 
and  eternal.  Each  man  carries  his  own 
burden  of  unbeHef,  sorrow,  temptation, 
care,  into  the  House  of  God,  and  the 
preacher  has  to  hearten  all  ;  for,  indeed, 
the  work  of  the  pulpit  in  our  day  is  not  so 
much  to  teach  or  define  as  to  stimulate  y 
and  encourage.  That  minister  who  re- 
ceives a  body  of  people  more  or  less  cast 
down,  and  wearied  in  the  great  battle  of 
the  soul,  and  sends  them  forth  full  of  good 
cheer  and  enthusiasm,  has  done  his  work 
and  deserved  well  of  his  people.  He  has 
shown  himself  a  true  shepherd,  and  he 
had  not  done  this  service  without  knowing 
both  the  Will  of  God  and  the  Hfe  of  man, 
without  draining  a  wide  w^atershed  of  ex- 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

perience — from  high  hills  where  the  soul 
has  been  alone  with  God,  and  from  deep 
valleys  where  the  soul  has  tasted  the 
agonies  of  life — into  the  stream  that  shall 
be  the  motive  power  of  many  lives  on  the 
plains  beneath. 

If  the  sermon  be  in  its  degree  a  prophet- 
ical utterance,  then  it  must  be  in  its  essence 
a  mystery.  What  the  prophet  tells  forth 
he  must  first  be  told,  but  how  God  un- 
covers His  servant's  ear  and  whispers  His 
message  no  one  can  explain.  The  true 
preacher  is  distinguished  by  a  certain 
demonic  influence — a  divine  passion — 
which  breathes  through  the  thought,  the 
words,  the  very  manner,  which  cannot  be 
described,  which  is  felt  in  the  marrow  of 
the  bones.  This  is  the  only  infallible 
sign  of  a  prophet  ;  it  is  the  baptism  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  about  such  secret  and 
sacred  things  it  becometh  one  to  be  silent 
and  to  fear.  When  one  passes  from 
vision  to  utterance,  then  it  is  possible  and 


THE   GENESIS   OF   A    SERMON 

useful  to  inquire  in  what  way  a  sermon 
comes  into  existence  and  grows  into  per- 
fection. People  will  see  the  finished 
product,  but  as  a  rule  they  are  rigidly  ex- 
cluded from  the  manufactory,  which  no 
one  is  allowed  to  enter  except  on  busi- 
ness. Perhaps  it  might  be  better  for  a 
minister  to  take  hearers  into  his  confi- 
dence about  the  production  of  sermons, 
both  because  they  would  be  very  much 
interested,  and  because  they  would  have 
a  more  intelligent  sympathy  with  the 
preacher.  They  would  be  delivered  from 
various  blinding  and  irritating  errors,  such 
as  confounding  an  unread  with  an  extem- 
pore sermon,  while  they  ought  to  know 
that  the  former  may  have  cost  a  week's 
study,  and  have  been  written  word  for 
word,  and  that  the  latter,  having  cost 
nothing,  neither  time  nor  thought,  is 
worth  nothing,  and  for  purposes  of  de- 
scription ought  to  be  described  as  'ex- 
trumpery.  '     Certainly  it    must    be  useful 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

for  practical  men,  whose  life-work  is  to 
be  preaching,  to  compare  notes  on  the 
various  methods  of  preparation,  believing 
that  as  the  blessing  of  the  Divine  Spirit 
will  only  rest  on  the  outcome  of  hard, 
honest  work,  the  more  thorough  and  skil- 
ful that  work  is,  the  more  likely  is  it  to  be 
crowned  with  prosperity. 

A  sermon,  I  submit,  is  the  result  of  six 
processes,  and  the  first  is  Selection. 

Curious  stories  are  afloat  regarding  this 
process,  which  suggest  that  in  some  quar- 
ters it  must  be  very  imperfectly  under- 
stood. It  is  said  that  the  preacher  will 
sometimes  spend  the  week  seeking  for  a 
text,  and  be  only  delivered  from  despair 
on  Saturday  night  by  lighting  on  a  verse, 
in  some  minor  prophet,  which  has  a  catch- 
ing sound,  and  looks  as  if  it  would  lend 
itself  to  a  '  memorable '  division.  People 
remark  next  day  that  it  was  wonderful 
how  much  he  brought  out  of  it,  but  they 
might  have  more  shrewdly  considered  how 


THE   GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

much  he  put  into  it.  This  is  speaking  by- 
sleight  of  hand,  and  the  preacher  is  simply 
a  verbal  juggler  performing  in  a  sacred 
place.  Others  deprecate  the  very  idea  of 
selecting  a  subject,  and  declare  that  if 
ministers  only  had  faith  it  would  be  given 
unto  them — one  allowing  his  Bible  to  open 
at  a  certain  place,  and  so  obtaining  his 
text  by  lot ;  another  waiting  till  Sunday 
morning,  and  even  till  he  is  in  the  pulpit, 
for  guidance.  An  expert  in  sermons  can 
recognise  this  type  at  once,  partly  by  the 
preacher  using  a  pocket  Bible,  from  which 
he  can  eke  out  the  time  by  copious  refer- 
ences, and  partly  by  an  introduction 
enough  to  alarm  even  courageous  hearers, 
explaining  how  the  preacher  had  been  led 
by  a  special  providence  to  his  theme,  but 
chiefly  by  the  style,  which  is  a  series  of 
tacks  through  a  dead  sea  of  pious  plati- 
tudes in  hope  of  catching  a  breeze  that 
will  bring  the  ship  to  some  haven.  This 
method  is  commended  in  theory  as  show- 

9 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

ing  a  proper  dependence  on  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and  in  public  is  usually  discredited 
by  the  thinness  of  the  sermon  and  the 
smallness  of  the  congregation.  In  Scot- 
land this  preacher  is  identified  with  deli- 
cate and  suggestive  sarcasm,  as  a  'gude 
cratur,'  and  he  is  really  the  ghost  of  mys- 
ticism, the  caricature  of  Evangelism. 

A  certain  practical  and  robust  mind  has 
no  difficulty  in  finding  texts,  because, 
within  very  wide  limits,  it  can  manipulate 
any  text  in  a  reputable  and  solid  fashion. 
As  it  is  the  duty  of  this  artisan  to  furnish 
two  sermons  for  next  Sunday,  he  goes  out, 
say  on  Tuesday,  into  the  Bible  as  into  a 
woodyard,  and  selects,  with  due  delibera- 
tion, suitable  material,  and  then,  bit  by 
bit,  he  constructs  the  discourses,  measur- 
ing, sawing,  planing,  and  joining  in  a  very 
deft  manner,  and  finishing  with  a  polish 
composed  of  one  part  spirit,  crude  and 
fiery,  and  three  parts  thick  sweet  oil.  This 
workman  has  lying  by  him  a  set  of  simple 


THE  GENESIS  OF  A  SERMON 

designs  which  suffice  for  anything  he  is 
Hkely  to  attempt,  and,  to  do  him  justice, 
he  is  not  given  to  fancies.  If  his  subject 
be  a  doctrine,  say  Faith,  then  he  uses 
No.  I. :  (a)  The  origin  of  Faith  ;  (d)  The 
nature  of  Faith  ;  (c)  The  object  of  Faith  ; 
(d)  The  effects  of  Faith.  And  so  for 
Hope  or  Love.  But  if  his  subject  be  a 
Scripture  hero,  say  Moses,  then  he  takes 
down  Design  II.  :  (a)  Moses'  parentage; 
(d)  His  training ;  (<f)  His  work  ;  (d)  His 
death  (this  optional,  according  to  circum- 
stances) ;  (e)  His  character,  with  lessons. 
No  charge  of  slackness  can  be  brought 
against  this  preacher,  for  he  always  turns 
out  a  piece  of  tradesmanlike  work  ;  but  it 
still  remains,  if  one  dare  say  it  in  the  face 
of  men  of  reputation  and  position  in  the 
Church,  that  there  is  surely  some  difference 
ifi  principle  between  the  construction  of  a 
table  and  a  sermon.  He  that  can  preach 
about    anything    can  really   preach  about 

nothing.     A  sermon  is  more  than  a  cun- 
II 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

nin^  creation  ;  it  is  an  inspiration,  not  so 
much  dead  stuff  laboriously  fitted  together, 
but  a  tree  whose  leaf  is  green,  which  yield- 
eth  its  fruit  in  due  season. 

It  is  not  the  man  who  selects  the  text — 
that  is  not  the  inwardness  of  the  fact — it 
is  the  text  which  selects  the  man.  As 
the  minister  was  busy  with  study,  or  as  he 
sat  by  the  bedside  of  the  sick,  or  as  he 
walked  the  crowded  street,  or  as  he  wan- 
dered over  the  purple  heather,  or — such 
things  have  happened,  the  grace  of  God 
being  sovereign  —  as  he  endured  in  a 
Church  Court,  the  truth,  clad  in  a  text, 
which  is  the  more  or  less  perfect  dress  of 
the  Spirit,  suddenly  appeared  and  claimed 
his  acquaintance.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
they  had  met  in  the  past,  as  one  is 
haunted  by  the  idea  that  he  has  known 
some  one  before  he  has  ever  seen  him ; 
and  he  will  be  right,  for  there  is  a  pre- 
established  harmony  between  that  par- 
ticular truth  and  his  soul.     He  is  the  man 

12 


THE    GENESIS    OF   A    SERMON 

to  declare  it  to  the  world,  and  it  is  the 
truth  to  arouse  his  powers.  The  minister 
ought  at  once  to  put  down  this  idea  in  a 
large  book,  with  six  pages  at  its  com- 
mand, for  they  will  be  needed.  Some 
slight  note  may  be  made  of  this  first 
meeting  and  its  incidents,  and  then  a 
friendship — shall  I  say  courtship? — be- 
gins, which  may  last  for  years  before  the 
w^orld  knows  anything  about  the  mat- 
ter. Sometimes  the  idea  immediately  fas- 
cinates, but  it  does  not  follow  that  its 
marriage-day  should  be  hastened ;  it  is 
desirable  that  acquaintance  should  first 
grow  into  knowledge.  Sometimes  the 
idea  actually  repels,  and  the  minister  vows 
he  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  but  he 
must  not  be  too  sure,  for  hate  is  a  form  of 
love.  One  by  one  those  ideas  that  have 
come  out  from  a  multitude  and  seized  the 
mind  will  grow  into  sermons,  and  mean- 
while any  glimpses  of  them  in  quiet  hours 

and  any  chance  interview  with  them  must 
13 


THE  CURE  OF  SOULS 

be  recorded.    Such  notes  are  all  prolegom- 
ena   to    the    discourse,    pencil    sketches 
from   which   the   picture  will   be  painted. 
*  How    long   does   it   take    to    prepare    a 
sermon  ?  '  is  an  ambiguous  question.       If 
you  mean  to  write  the  manuscript,  then  a 
day  may  suffice  ;  if  you  mean  to  think  a 
sermon,     then     it     may     be    ten    years. 
What  time  goes  to  the  making  of  wine  ? 
In    a    few    months  the    vine   springs   and 
flourishes  and   bears   her  grapes,  and  in  a 
few   days  they  are   trodden  into  the  new 
wine.      But    a   glass   of    Madeira — it    has 
made  voyages,   and   been   tossed   up  and 
down   in  the  hold   of  vessels,  and  lain  in 
dark  cool   cellars  for  half  a  century,  and 
so  it  has  come  to  mellow  perfection.    New 
thought   is  almost  sure  to   be  crude  and 
yeasty,  and  therefore  wise  and  charitable 
deliverances  can    hardly   be    expected    of 
young    preachers,    because    their   thought 
has    not   yet   had   time   to    ripen.     It   is 

enough    if  it  be    strong   and   rich ;    fine- 

14 


THE  GENESIS  OF  A  SERMON 

ness     and     fragrance     will     come     with 

age. 

As  the  years  go  on,  a  preacher's  success 

will    largely  depend  on    his    accumulated 

resources    of    sermon    material — not    the 

gold  which  has  been  minted  and  now  is  in 

circulation,    nor     even     what     is    going 

through    the    mill,    but    the   ore    in  sight 

within  the  mine.     When  he  discovers  that 

the    reserve    is   being    exhausted,  then    it 

would  be  wise  to   close  production  before 

he   has   to  fall  back    on    low-grade    ore, 

and  to  strike  a  deeper  level,  where  new 

and   richer  veins  will   often    be  revealed. 

The  worst  condition  for  sermon-making  is 

where   the    minister   lives   from   hand   to 

mouth,  and   the    best  where  he    longs  to 

live  to  the  age  of  the  patriarchs,  because 

he  is  certain  that   he  will    never  be  able 

in    a    short    modern    lifetime    to    deliver 

one-tenth    of   the    living    thoughts  in  his 

brain. 

The  second  process  is  Separation. 
15 


THE   CURE  OF  SOULS 

When  the  minister  turns  over  the  leaves 
of  the  book  with  his  reserves,  and  settles 
in  his  mind  that  a  certain  theme  is  ready 
for  preaching,  he  has  before  him  a  hard 
week's  work,  and  if  he  stints  his  care  at 
any  point  then  he  will  simply  fling  away 
his  treasure.  It  happens  sometimes  that  a 
sermon  fails  because  although  the  carving 
is  excellent  the  wood  is  worthless,  but 
just  as  often  because  although  the  wood 
be  richly  grained  the  artist  has  scamped 
his  labour.  A  noble  and  inspiring  idea  is 
only  a  promise  of  success,  and  the  issue 
hangs  on  skill  and  patience.  The  idea 
does  not  come  alone,  but  is  accompanied 
by  ninety-nine  others  with  which  it  is  con- 
nected by  blood,  and  to  which  it  is  nat- 
urally attached.  One  cannot  undertake  a 
more  delicate  task  than  to  wean  an  idea 
from  its  relatives,  but  this  is  absolutely 
necessary  in  the  interests  of  the  sermon. 
It  is  one  thing  for  the  preacher  to  woo 
and  win  a  single  idea,  and  to  set  up  house 

i6 


THE    GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

with  it  in  undisturbed  company,  and 
another  to  have  all  his  wife's  relations 
landed  on  him.  Some  sermons  are 
crowded  with  related  doctrines — the  con- 
nection is  often  very  slender — which  brawl 
together  and  jostle  one  another  in  a  very 
confusing  and  irritating  fashion.  If  a 
preacher  thinks  it  wise,  he  may  in  an  hour 
compass  the  circle  of  Christian  doctrine ; 
but  it  goes  without  saying  that  no  subject 
will  be  more  than  touched,  and  that  every 
sermon  will  be  a  repetition  of  the  last. 
Surely  half  an  hour  can  be  fully  used  in 
showing,  say,  the  absolute  and  unfettered 
grace  of  divine  forgiveness,  without  trav- 
elling into  the  doctrines  either  of  sin  or 
the  atonement, — which  in  such  a  case 
ought  to  be  implicit, — and  a  preacher  may 
very  well  enforce  the  duty  of  trust  in  God, 
without  going  into  all  the  problems  that 
arise  under  the  head  of  faith. 

'  He's   a   good    preacher' — a    Highland 

gamekeeper  was  describing  his  minister, — 
17 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

*but  he  scatters  terribly.'  It  is  the  differ- 
ence between  a  single  rifle  bullet  which,  if 
it  hits,  kills,  and  a  charge  of  small  shot 
which  only  peppers.  Take  one  sin  that 
happens  to  be  mine  and  other  men's,  and 
let  the  preacher  confine  himself,  say,  to 
pride,  and  it  will  be  strange  if  he  does  not 
arrest  and  shame  me,  but  let  him  throw  in 
a  dozen  other  sins  and  I  shall  be  unmoved. 
My  medicine  is  held  in  too  large  a  solu- 
tion. A  sermon  ought  to  be  a  mono- 
graph and  not  an  encyclopaedia,  an  agency 
for  pushing  one  article,  not  a  general  store 
where  one  can  purchase  anything  from  a 
button  to  a  coffin.  There  are  minds  so 
comprehensive  and  agile  that  they  can 
play  with  half  a  dozen  ideas  in  one  ser- 
mon and  delight  an  audience — making 
one  idea  illuminate  another,  and  using  the 
combined  force  of  opposite  ideas  to  pro- 
duce the  desired  effect ;  but  for  the  aver- 
age man  with  whom  we  are  concerned  the 
handling  of  one  is  a  sufficient  strain. 

I8 


THE    GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

[There  are  three  degrees — the  preacher 
below  par,  who  can  speak  for  an  hour 
without  a  single  idea ;  the  preacher  above 
par,  who  will  charm  us  for  an  hour  with  a 
coruscation  of  ideas  ;  and  the  preacher  just 
at  par,  who  does  his  duty  in  something 
less  than  forty  minutes  by  one  distinct 
idea.] 

Two  reasons  may  be  suggested  for  cas- 
ual sermons — where  the  speaker  saunters 
from  door  to  door — and  the  first  is  simply 
slackness  and  laziness.  He  has  not  set 
himself  in  a  strenuous  and  persevering 
fashion  to  identify  and  isolate  his  idea. 
This  is  a  forenoon's  work,  and  four  hours 
has  not  been  wasted  if  by  one  o'clock  the 
student  can  rise  from  his  desk,  saying, 
What  I  have  been  thinking  about  for 
years,  and  am  going  to  preach  about  on 
Sunday,  is  not  that,  nor  that,  but  just  this 
— one  crisp,  clean-cut,  complete  idea. 

[Compensation    for   this    long   travail, 

with  its  apparently  limited  result,  can  be 
19 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

found  in  the  waste  products  which  are 
thrown  off — all  of  which  can  be  utilised  at 
some  future  date.  The  debris  in  cutting 
out  your  angel  from  the  marble  may  afford 
material  for  many  a  little  Psyche.] 

Another  reason  may  be  the  supposed 
necessity  for  safeguarding  one's  creed  by 
insisting  on  opposite  truths  in  one  sermon. 
It  were  dangerous,  it  is  supposed,  to  insist 
upon  Christ's  humanity  without  a  long 
passage  on  His  Divinity,  or  to  enforce 
works  without  exalting  faith  in  the  same 
breath.  Surely  the  time  has  come  for 
putting  this  policy  of  fear  into  the  pillory 
and  delivering  young  men  from  its  tyr- 
anny. It  is  insulting  to  the  preacher  to 
suppose  that  because  he  journeyed  towards 
the  south  pole  to-day  he  denies  the  north 
pole,  and  exasperating  to  the  hearers  to 
be  hurried  backwards  and  forwards  in  op- 
posite directions  lest  they  should  rush  to 
extremes.  Preacher  and  hearers  should 
give  themselves  to  one  idea  with  as  much 


THE    GENESIS   OF   A    SERMON 

concentration  as  if  there  were  not  another 
in  the  universe  of  thought.  This  is  to 
focus  the  mind. 

The  third  process  is  Illmnination. 

And  now  the  student  sets  his  bare, 
cold,  lifeless  idea  in  the  light  of  all  he  has 
read,  has  seen,  has  felt,  has  suffered.  He 
has  mercilessly  withdrawn  it  from  its  en- 
vironment that  it  may  be  his  own  ;  now  he 
restores  it  to  the  wide  world  that  it  may 
live,  and  according  to  the  wideness  and 
richness  of  the  student's  world  will  be  the 
glow,  the  red  blood  of  his  sermon.  He 
goes  on  a  marriage  tour  with  his  bride.  It 
is  now  that  he  garners  the  benefit  of  his 
intellectual,  spiritual,  and  human  culture, 
and  has  an  unspeakable  advantage  over 
the  ablest  Philistine.  Those  mornings 
given  to  Plato,  that  visit  to  Florence 
where  he  got  an  insight  into  Italian  art, 
that  hard-won  trip  to  Egypt  the  birthplace 
of  civilisation,  his  sustained  acquaintance 
with    Virgil,     his     by-study    of    physical 

21 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

science,  his  taste  in  music,  the  subtlest  and 
most  reHgious  of  the  arts,  all  now  rally  to 
his  aid.  Greek  philosophy  clarifies  the 
thinking,  Andrea  Del  Sarto  illustrates  it ; 
a  poet  suggests  a  musical  line  ;  Faraday 
points  out  a  parallel  between  the  worlds  of 
nature  and  spirit.  He  is  unfortunate 
whose  thoughts  are  untouched  by  poetry 
and  unfortified  by  ancient  wisdom,  over 
whose  study  the  sky  is  ever  grey  and  dull. 
An  idea  may  be  his,  but  his  impression  of 
it  will  be  cold  and  colourless.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  must  have  some  reserve 
and  self-denial  on  whose  mind  the  sun 
beats  strongly.  It  is  possible  to  confuse 
and  blot  out  an  idea  by  excess  of  light,  so 
that  amid  pictures,  rivers,  pyramids,  sun- 
sets, science,  poetry,  history,  and  drama, 
the  hearer  does  not  catch  the  one  message 
that  the  preacher  had  for  his  soul.  One 
blind  after  another  has  to  be  pulled  down 
on  certain  brilliant  and  opulent  minds  be- 


THE    GENESIS    OF    A    SERMON 

fore  an  idea,  however  grand  and  august, 
has  its  right  place. 

[Travel  must  be  used  very  skilfully  and 
sparingly,  because  the  Righi  and  the  Bay 
of  Naples  are  not  now  unknown  to  a  con- 
gregation. On  the  whole,  it  may  be  also 
better  for  the  average  man  not  to  go  to  the 
Holy  Land  for  the  sake  of  his  people 
unless  he  has  great  self-control.  His  per- 
sonal experiences  will  make  even  the 
Mount  of  Olives  a  terror,  and  his  interpo- 
lated explanation  from  '  what  I  saw  '  will 
desecrate  the  noblest  passages  in  the  Gos- 
pels. Some  congregations  who  sent  their 
ministers  to  the  Holy  Land  in  the  kind- 
ness of  their  hearts,  would  now  pay  twice 
the  cost  cheerfully  to  obliterate  the  jour- 
ney from  the  memory  of  the  good  man, 
and  to  rescue,  say  the  fifteenth  of  St.  Luke, 
from  illustrative  anecdotes.] 

The  fourth  process  is  Meditation. 

And  now  for  two  days  this  idea  must 
23 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

be  removed  from  the  light,  where  reason 
and  imagination  have  their  sphere,  and  be 
hidden  away  in  the  dark  chambers  of  the 
soul.  This  is  not  an  intellectual  proposi- 
tion to  be  asserted  and  proved,  or  a  fancy 
to  be  tracked  out  and  exhibited.  This  is 
a  spiritual  truth  to  be  commended  to 
faith,  a  living  principle  to  be  enforced  on 
conscience.  It  must,  therefore,  be  first 
imprinted  on  the  preacher's  soul  till  it  has 
become  a  part  of  his  own  being,  before  he 
can  really  understand  or  declare  it.  One 
reason  why  many  masterly  sermons  fail  is 
that  they  have  never  had  the  benefit  of 
this  process ;  therefore  they  are  clear,  in- 
teresting, eloquent,  but  helpless.  They  do 
not  make  way,  and  lay  hold  of  hearers, 
because  they  have  never  conquered  the 
speaker.  He  has  not  been  horrified  at 
this  sin,  has  not  felt  this  trial,  has  not  seen 
this  Christ  during  the  week  through  the 
sympathy  of  the   soul.     The   preacher,  to 

succeed,  must  be   Peter  as  he   denies  his 
24 


THE   GENESIS   OF  A   SERMON 

Lord,    and    Mary    as   her    brother     dies, 

and  the  Syrian  woman  as  she  sees  Christ 

yields     to     her     irresistible    importunity. 

This  baptism  into  the  heart  of  a  subject, 

till  the  preacher    and    sermon  be  of    one 

blood,  is  a  secret  process  that  can  go  on 

as    the    minister    does    his    work,  but  is 

much  accelerated  on  his  quiet  walks  and 

in    his    lonely   hours.      Unfortunately  for 

us,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century, 

with  its  competition,  sensationalism,    ex- 

ternahsm,  and  endless  bustle,  meditation  is 

a  lost  art,   like  the  making  of   Venetian 

glass  and  certain  painters'  pigments.      It  is 

not   reading,  nor  thinking,  nor    praying; 

it    is    brooding,    a    spiritual     experience, 

where  the  subject  is  hidden    in    the   soul 

as    leaven    in    three    measures    of    meal 

till  all  be  leavened.     What  we  have  chiefly 

to  learn  for  the  work  of  the  holy  ministry, 

in  our  day,  is  not  how  to  criticise,  nor  how 

to  read,   nor  how  to    speak,   nor    how  to 

organise,  but    how  to  meditate,   in   order 
25 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

that  present-day  sermons  may  add  to  their 
brightness  and  interest  the  greater  quah- 
ties  of  the  past,  depth  of  experience,  and 
an  atmosphere  of  peace. 

It  will  be  observed  that  not  one  sen- 
tence of  the  sermon  has  as  yet  been 
composed,  and  so  on  Friday  morning  the 
minister  proceeds  to  the  fifth  process — 
Elaboration. 

He  now  sits  down  at  his  desk  and 
places  before  him  thirty  small  pieces  of 
paper.  [This  is  an  obiter  dictimi,  for  if  one 
should  say,  *  Why  not  two  sheets  of  fools- 
cap ? '  I  can  only  express  amazement  at 
his  commonplace  contrivance.  My  plan, 
as  will  appear,  is  much  more  ingenious, 
and  is  an  invention.  It  is  with  us,  as  with 
the  medical  profession,  a  rule  to  patent 
nothing,  but  to  offer  every  discovery  for 
the  use  of  our  brethren.] 

Let  each  thought,  illustration,  applica- 
tion, that   has   occurred   to   the    minister 

under  his   idea  be  committed  to  one  of 

26 


THE    GENESIS    OF   A   SERMON 

those  scraps.  Just  as  one  remembers 
them ;  in  no  sequence — a  mere  mob  of 
recollections.  It  is,  of  course,  taken  for 
granted  that  each  must  be,  as  it  were,  the 
legitimate  child  of  that  idea.  No  va- 
grants are  to  be  picked  up  and  adopted. 

[For  these  the  minister  has  another 
book,  a  sort  of  Foundling  Asylum  for 
homeless  and  nameless  thoughts,  but  out 
of  which  some  very  good  children  may 
come.] 

When  the  heap  is  complete,  behold  the 

raw  material,  selected,  picked,  dyed,  ready 

now  for  the  mill  that  shall  weave  the  loose 

disconnected    threads    into    pattern    and 

cloth,  or,  if  it   please  you,  to  revert  to   a 

former   image,    the    print   must    now    be 

taken    off    the    negative.     This   heap   of 

thought-stuff  is  as  an  alphabet,  with  every 

letter  there,  but  all  unarranged.     It  is  the 

student's  business  to  spread  the  letters  out 

on  his  table,  and  to  survey  them  carefully 

till  he  lights  on  A  and   B  and  C,  on  to 
27 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

X  Y  Z.  For  he  knows  that  thought  follows 
a  certain  order,  and  it  is  the  same  order  in 
the  mind  of  a  peasant  as  a  philosopher, 
only  in  the  former  case  some  of  the  letters 
are  wanting — blank  spaces — and  some  are 
dim.  Educated  people  resent  a  sermon 
where  A  comes  in  the  middle  of  the  alpha- 
bet and  S  precedes  M,  and  they  are  not 
appeased  by  the  fact  that  they  have  had 
all  the  letters  somehow  ;  and  it  may  be 
worth  saying  that  people  without  culture 
are  almost  as  dissatisfied  by  a  disorderly 
sermon.  Hearers  have  an  action  of  dam- 
ages against  a  preacher  who  rambles  and 
comes  again  on  his  own  track,  because  it  is 
disheartening  to  follow  a  guide  whose 
progress  is  a  zigzag,  and  because  it  is  plain 
that  he  has  scamped  his  work. 

[Certain  fertile  and  original  minds  are 
what  gardeners  call  '  sports, '  that  is,  they 
do  not  come  under  ordinary  laws.  They 
are    incapable    of   reasoned    or  connected 

thinking,  and  their  productions  ought  to 
28 


THE   GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

be  printed  in  paragraphs  with  asterisks  be- 
tween— each  an  aphorism,  an  observation, 
an  illustration — flashes  of  brilliant  light 
for  which  we  are  thankful.] 

Our  average  man  must  not  claim  the 
privilege  of  vagrant  genius  ;  he  must 
wrestle  and  sweat,  placing,  reviewing, 
transposing  till  the  way  stands  fair  and 
open  from  Alpha  to  Omega  —  a  clean, 
straight  furrow  from  end  to  end  of  the 
field,  a  chain  of  single  links  which  when 
put  to  the  test  holds.  Something  there 
will  be  before  A,  especially  when  a  man 
is  young — an  introduction  which  used  to 
extend  back  to  the  creation  of  the  world 
and  the  purposes  of  God,  and  now  em- 
braces the  latest  results  of  criticism  on  the 
book  from  which  the  text  is  taken. 
Whether  our  fathers  liked  to  approach, 
say  the  Son  of  God,  through  an  under- 
ground passage  of  theological  archaeology 
may  be  doubtful,   but  it  is  certain   their 

children    have   no   wish   to  arrive   at   an 

29 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

ethical  principle  of  prophecy  through  a 
museum  of  the  higher  criticism.  This 
generation  desires  to  be  ushered  into  the 
subject  of  the  day  without  wearisome  pre- 
liminaries, and  nothing  will  more  certainly 
take  the  edge  off  the  appetite  than  a 
laborious  preface.  Very  likely  it  must  be 
written,  or  else  the  minister  could  not  get 
further,  but  it  ought  then  to  be  burned  as 
having  served  its  purpose.  It  is  really 
getting  up  steam,  and  there  is  no  use  in 
inviting  passengers  on  board  till  the  ves- 
sel is  ready  to  start. 

Something  there  will  be  after  Z  —  a 
striking  and  eloquent  peroration,  and,  al- 
though this  sounds  cruel  to  a  degree,  this 
ought  also  to  be  suppressed.  When  the 
sermon  has  culminated  after  a  natural 
fashion,  it  ought  to  end,  leaving  its  effect 
to  rest  not  on  rhetoric  but  on  truth. 
There  may  be  times  when  for  effect  the 
sermon   may  cease   suddenly  some  letters 

before  Z,   because   the  audience  has  sur- 
30 


THE   GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

rendered  without   terms  and  the  sermon 
has  served  its  purpose. 

When  a  speaker  is  pleading  a  great 
cause,  and  sees  hard-headed  men  glaring 
before  them  with  such  ferocity  that  every 
one  knows  they  are  afraid  of  breaking 
down,  let  him  stop  in  the  middle  of  a 
paragraph  and  take  the  collection,  and  if 
he  be  declaring  the  Evangel,  and  a  certain 
tenderness  comes  over  the  faces  of  the 
people,  let  him  close  his  words  to  them 
and  call  them  to  prayer.  Speech  can  be 
too  lengthy,  too  formal,  too  eloquent,  too 
grammatical.  For  one  to  lose  his  toil- 
some introduction,  in  which  he  happened 
to  mention  two  Germans,  with  quotations, 
and  his  twice-written  conclusion,  in  which 
he  had  that  pretty  fancy  from  Tennyson, 
is  hard  to  flesh  and  blood.  It  is  worse 
than  the  '  Massacre  of  the  Innocents  ' — it 
is  infanticide  ;  but  in  those  sacrifices  of 
self  the  preacher's  strength  lies,  on  them 

the  blessing  of  God  rests.     Broken  sen- 
31 


THE   CURE   OF    SOULS 

tences,  when  the  speaker  could  not  con- 
tinue, unfinished  sermons,  when  the  Spirit 
of  God  was  working  powerfully,  have 
wrought  marvels  beyond  all  the  wisdom 
of  the  schools. 

If  Saturday  be  given  to  the  actual  writ- 
ing of  the  sermon  (which  comes  under 
technique)  then  there  remains  one  other 
process,  which  is  reserved  for  Sunday 
morning,  and  that  is  Revision. 

No  photograph  quite  represents  the  face 
that  was  taken,  or  leaves  the  studio  un- 
touched. Certain  lines  have  to  be  modi- 
fied, certain  blots  to  be  removed.  It  will 
be  a  very  gracious  sermon  that  needs  no 
retouching.  Line  by  line  the  sermon  has 
to  be  read  over  with  the  faces  of  his  con- 
gregation before  him,  so  that  the  minister 
may  hear  how  it  sounds  in  the  living  en- 
vironment. Many  things  are  incisive  and 
telling,  clever  and  sparkling  on  paper, 
which  we  feel  will  not  do  face  to  face. 

They  are  now  too  telling,  too  clever.     A 

32 


THE   GENESIS   OF   A   SERMON 

well-turned  epigram,  which  cost  much  oil  : 
but  that  white-haired  saint  will  misunder- 
stand it.  Our  St.  John  must  not  be 
grieved.  So  it  must  go.  A  very  impres- 
sive word  of  the  new  scientific  coinage  : 
what  can  yon  sempstress  make  of  it  ? 
Rich  people  have  many  pleasures,  she  has 
only  her  church.  Well,  she  shall  have  it 
without  rebate  :  the  big  word  is  erased — 
half  a  line  in  mourning.  A  shrewd  hit  at 
a  certain  weakness  :  but  that  dear  old 
mother,  whose  house  is  a  refuge  for  or- 
phans and  all  kinds  of  miserables,  it  is 
just  possible  she  may  be  hurt.  The  min- 
ister had  not  thought  of  her  till  he  said 
the  words  with  Dorcas  sitting  in  her  cor- 
ner. Another  black  line  in  the  fair  manu- 
script. This  exposure  of  narrowness  is  at 
any  rate  justified  :  but  the  minister  sees 
one  face  redden,  and  its  owner  is  as  true  a 
man  as  God  ever  made.  It  is  left  out  too. 
Somewhat  strong  that  statement  :  an  ad- 
jective  shall  be    omitted :    some    people 

33 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

have  a  delicate  sense  of  words.  This  quip 
may  excite  a  laugh  :  better  not — it  may- 
hinder  the  force  of  the  next  passage  on 
Jesus.  The  sermon  seems  to  be  losing  at 
every  turn  in  harmony,  vivacity,  richness, 
ease ;  it  is  gaining  in  persuasiveness,  un- 
derstanding, sympathy,  love  :  it  is  losing 
what  is  human  and  gaining  what  is  divine  ; 
and  after  that  sermon  is  delivered,  and  has 
passed  into  men's  lives,  the  preacher  will 
bless  God  for  every  word  he  removed. 

He  stands  before  his  people  now  in  the 
supreme  moment  of  his  life,  and  a  sense 
of  the  solemnity  of  his  duty  overcomes 
him,  so  that  they  see  him  hesitate  between 
the  text  and  the  sermon.  Let  them  pray 
with  one  accord  that  upon  this  frail 
brother  man,  on  whom  God  has  laid  such 
a  work,  the  Holy  Ghost  may  descend,  and 
the  same  Spirit  make  tender  their  hearts 
within  them. 

34 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  A  SERMON 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    TECHNIQUE    OF    A    SERMON 

When  a  student  of  a  certain  college  dear 
unto  my  heart  preached  in  a  city  church 
in  the  former  time,  his  friends  went  to 
hear  him  and  offered  him  the  benefit  of 
an  impartial  criticism  next  morning  at  the 
common-room  fire.  Faults  were  pointed 
out  with  frank  and  incisive  speech,  but 
only  one  was  considered  unpardonable. 
If  the  sermon  had  been  uninteresting, 
and  the  congregation  had  slumbered, 
there  was  a  strong  presumption  that  the 
preacher  had  been  thoughtful,  and  if  he 
rectified  some  ancient  notions  with  many 
technical  and  unintelligible  words,  then 
it  was  certain  that  he  had  been  profound, 
— one  who  in  course  of  time  and  patient 

37 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

continuance  in  profundity  might  climb 
into  a  Professor's  chair.  [It  is  said  unto 
this  day,  concerning  a  preacher  whom  con- 
gregations will  not  abide,  '  He  ought  to 
be  made  a  Professor ' ;  but  of  late  the 
Church  has  rather  inclined  to  the  policy 
of  putting  brilliant  preachers  into  theolog- 
ical chairs  —  with  doubtful  results,  be- 
cause the  pulpit  loses  in  strength,  while 
the  new  Professor  is  apt  to  be  described 
in  scholarly  circles  as  showy.]  But  if  the 
misguided  student  gripped  the  people  by 
dealing  with  things  in  their  experience, 
and  using  the  language  of  the  market- 
place, then  he  was  stigmatised  as  '  popular,' 
and  in  the  case  of  his  having  stirred  the 
people  unto  one  of  the  deep  human  emo- 
tions, every  right-minded  man  knew  that 
he  was  a  charlatan  of  the  first  water. 

Within  a  stone's-throw  of  this  place  of 
learning  was  a  Court  of  Justice  where 
educated    men  were  daily    practising  the 

same  art  of  public  speech,  but  where  an- 

38 


THE   TECHNIQUE    OF   A   SERMON 

Other  canon  of  success  obtained.  If  any 
barrister,  being  intrusted  with  a  case,  had 
plunged  into  a  historical  or  critical  dis- 
sertation on  a  particular  law,  it  would 
have  been  his  last  brief,  and  the  curious 
thing  is  that  his  fellow-barristers  would 
have  given  him  scant  praise.  His  busi- 
ness, as  he  took  it,  was  to  strip  his  case  of 
all  legal  technicalities,  and  to  lay  it  before 
the  jury  in  such  persuasive  language  as  to 
win  their  suffrages.  His  aim  was  not  to 
receive  the  approval  of  scientific  experts, 
but  to  gain  a  verdict.  If  he  descended  to 
claptrap,  or  said  what  was  not  true,  then 
he  suffered  loss,  but  within  the  conditions 
of  fair  reasoning  he  used  any  means  that 
seemed  likely  to  win  the  jury,  and  in  pro- 
portion as  he  could  honestly  bring  twelve 
fellow-citizens  to  his  view  he  was  counted 
successful. 

The  preacher  also  addresses  a  jury  of 
say  five  hundred  people,  and  whether  his 
subject  be  sin    or  righteousness,  doctrine 

39 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

or  duty,  he  has  to  bring  them  to  his  way 
of  thinking,  and  persuade  them  to  beHeve 
his  message.  If  he  talks  above  their 
heads,  or  delivers  himself  of  dead  informa- 
tion, or  airs  his  own  conceits,  or  raises 
vain  questions,  or  bores  them  with  obso- 
lete doctrines,  then  he  misses  his  chance, 
and  in  spite  of  his  learning  or  acuteness  or 
piety  he  is  a  failure.  *  I  once  heard  him 
preach,'  said  a  man  of  letters,  who  was 
referring  to  a  distinguished  clergyman, 
'and  it  was  an  excellent  sermon — about 
the  best  in  my  experience.'  '  His  text  ?  ' 
*  I  have  not  the  ghost  of  an  idea,  nor  do  I 
remember  his  argument,  nor  anything  he 
said.'  '  How  do  I  know  that  it  was 
good  ? '  '  Because  before  we  left  church  he 
convinced  us  that  God  was  love.  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  believe  that  to-day,  but  I 
believed  it  that  morning. — Yes,'  he  added, 
'  that  man  deserves  his  name,  for  he  knows 
his  business.' 

Regarding  the  substance  of  his  message, 

40 


THE   TECHNIQUE    OF   A   SERMON 

the  preacher  must  be  a  prophet,  declaring 
what  he  believes  with  all  his  heart ;  regard- 
ing its  form,  he  must  be  a  barrister,  deliv- 
ering what  he  has  to  say  in  a  skilful  and 
cunning  manner. 

Now,  the  art  of  public  speech  has  six 
canons,  and  the  first  is — 

Unity,  If  the  sermon  is  to  consist  of 
one  idea,  then  the  style  must  play  with 
this  idea  for  thirty  minutes,  so  that  the 
people  never  escape  from  its  sphere  of  in- 
fluence, are  never  wearied  by  it,  but  that 
with  every  minute  the  idea  grows  more 
intelligible,  reasonable,  winsome.  Whether 
in  such  circumstances  a  sermon  ought  to 
be  parcelled  out  into  heads  is  an  impor- 
tant question.  Three  detached  sermon- 
ettes  do  not  make  one  sermon  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  handful  of  observations  tied 
together  by  a  text  are  not  an  organic  whole. 
It  all  depends  on  whether  the  heads  ad- 
vance, ascend,  cumulate,  or  are  indepen- 
dent, disconnected,  parallel.  Heads  are 
41 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

either  water-tight  compartments,  in  which 
case  you  cannot  pass  from  one  to  the 
other,  and  are  exasperated  by  the  iron 
door,  or  they  are  floors  of  a  tower,  in 
which  case  one  will  not  halt  till  he  reaches 
the  top,  because  with  every  fresh  ascent 
he  gets  a  wider  view.  It  was  once  the 
fashion  to  have  heads,  and  now  it  is  the 
fashion  not  to  have  heads  ;  but  much  can 
be  said  for  the  former  way.  One  likes 
rests  and  points  of  departure. 

If  any  one  desires  to  lodge  an  idea  in 
the  minds  of  his  hearers  he  must  learn 
the  secret  of  artistic  repetition,  by  which 
the  same  thing  is  said  over  and  over 
again,  but  cast  into  a  new  dress  on  each 
reappearance.  Sometimes  it  is  an  intel- 
lectual proposition,  and  the  matter  is 
argued  to  the  great  delight  of  the  hard- 
headed  people,  who  begin  to  think  there 
is  something  in  this  idea.  Sometimes  it 
is  an  illustration  which  appears  to  simple 
folk,  and  they  fall  in  love  with  the  idea. 


THE   TECHNIQUE    OF   A   SERMON 

Sometimes  it  is  an  application,  and  prac- 
tical people  are  taken  by  storm.  Now 
this  Pretean  shape  arrests  the  conscience, 
now  it  convinces  the  reason,  now  it 
captivates  the  imagination,  and  now  it 
reinforces  the  will.  People  to  whom 
it  was  a  stranger  become  accustomed 
to  its  face  and  receive  it  in  the  end  as 
a  friend.  It  is  by  this  ingenious  and 
elaborate  reiteration  that  popular  speak- 
ers influence  the  average  man  and 
move  him  at  their  will.  The  citadel  has 
to  be  carried  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet, 
and  yields  only  at  the  sixth  assault.  The 
speaker,  we  shall  suppose,  feels  bound  to 
enforce  the  ever  fresh  and  needful  com- 
monplace, 'That  what  we  sow  we  shall 
reap.  '  [It  is  a  sign  of  weakness  to  shrink 
from  the  commonplace  and  to  take  refuge 
in  a  fantastic  originality.  Any  one  can 
have  an  entirely  new  and  very  striking 
view  of  familiar  scenery  by  standing  on 
his  head.]      The  statement  is  made  to  the 

43 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

audience  clearly  and  decidedly,  that  reap- 
ing will  follow  sowing,  and  a  hearer 
awakes  to  the  fact  that  some  one  is  speak- 
ing ;  which  is  something  gained,  for  it 
will  prevent  him  conducting  his  business 
in  church.  But  the  ambition  of  the 
preacher  is  not  exhausted.  He  now  in- 
sists that  no  one  can  break  the  connection 
between  sowing  and  reaping,  and  the 
hearer  has  identified  him  as  a  man  with 
some  kind  of  message.  So  far  good  : 
the  two  are  now  face  to  face.  Wheat 
produces  wheat,  tares  produce  tares.  It 
is  evident  the  preacher  has  got  hold  of 
some  truth  about  consequences  in  life, 
and  the  hearer  is  resolved  that  he  will 
have  it  out  of  him.  It  would  be  wis- 
dom for  every  man  to  examine  his  sow- 
ing, since  the  reaping  is  beyond  his 
changing.  The  hearer  is  inclined  to 
believe  that  the  preacher  is  asserting  the 
possibility  of  changing  tares  into  wheat, 
and  he  is  prepared  to  deny  the  statement. 

44 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A   SERMON 

Full  of  hope,  the  preacher  makes  a  sally 
into  life  to  support  his  principle :  the 
hearer  sees  at  last  what  he  is  after,  and 
takes  the  new  position  into  judgment. 
Now  the  preacher  throws  off  his  coat  for 
a  final  effort,  and  accomplishes  his  end. 
The  hearer  is  finally  convinced  that  the 
harvest  in  autumn  hangs  on  the  seed-time 
in  spring,  and  mentions  the  discovery 
freely  next  day  as  one  he  made  some 
years  ago.  The  preacher  may  then  con- 
gratulate himself,  for  no  teacher  is  satis- 
fied till  he  has  so  lodged  an  idea  in  the 
mind  that  his  people  claim  it  as  his  own. 
He  has  an  ample  reward  for  his  pains, 
when  his  people  some  day  turn  upon  him 
and  threaten  to  rend  him  for  criticising  an 
idea  which  he  himself  taught  them  in  the 
agony  of  his  soul,  and  which  they  guard 
jealously  as  their  personal  property. 

The  second  canon  ve^  Lucidity,  which 
lays  people  under  a  debt  of  gratitude. 
When  a  willing  and  intelligent  hearer  can 

45 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

follow  a  speaker  from  his  first  sentence  to 
his  last  without  effort,  he  is  almost  pre- 
pared to  agree  with  everything  he  says, 
even  although  he  should  assert  that  the 
earth  is  square.  If  a  distinguished  preacher 
be  conspicuously  lucid  we  may  be  for  a 
moment  disappointed,  judging  the  trans- 
parent water,  where  the  delicate  seaweed 
is  seen  on  the  rock  below,  to  be  shallow ; 
but  in  the  next  we  are  charmed,  because 
water  so  deep  has  been  so  clear  and 
revealing,  like  unto  St.  John's  Gospel. 
Lucidity  is  never  to  be  confounded  with 
simplicity  :  the  former  is  a  quality  of  style, 
the  latter  of  thought,  and  it  sometimes 
happens  that  what  is  childish  in  idea  may 
be  unintelligible  in  expression,  while  what 
is  profound  in  idea  may  be  plain  to  a  child. 
Too  much  can  be  made  of  simplicity,  and 
one  is  moved  to  protest  against  that  patron- 
ising phrase,  'the  simple  Gospel.'  The 
Gospel  is  everlasting :  it  is  mighty  ;  it  is 

divine  :  it  is  glorious ; — it  is   not  simple. 
46 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A    SERMON 

It  could  not  be,  for  the  Gospel  declares 
the  nature  of  God,  the  sin  of  man,  the 
way  of  life,  and  the  wonders  of  the  unseen 
world.  Nor  must  the  Gospel  be  degraded 
by  childish  arguments,  ignoble  illustra- 
tions, and  base  appeals.  But  the  Gospel 
is  lucid  in  the  mouth  of  the  apostles,  most 
of  all  from  the  lips  of  Jesus,  and  it  is  fair 
to  demand  that  it  be  always  preached  as  in 
the  fifteenth  of  St.  Luke  or  the  last  chap- 
ters of  St.  John. 

Lucid  speaking  is  dep^dent  on  clear 
thinking,  and  no  one  can  expect  to  put 
any  subject  clearly  before  his  fellows  till 
he  has  seen  it  himself  from  beginning  to 
end.  It  is  a  pleasant  occupation  to  watch 
the  clouds  wreathing  themselves  around  a 
mountain,  and  one  catches  lovely  glimpses 
when  the  sun  shines  through  the  mist. 
But  billowy  masses  of  words,  with  an  oc- 
casional exquisite  revelation,  is  not  profit- 
able preaching,  and,  at  its  best,  it  can 
never  hold  the  people  who  are  not  espe- 

47 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

cially  poetical,  but  have  a  passionate  desire 
to  know  what  the  speaker  means.  Poetry- 
is  not  by  any  means  a  good  discipHne  for 
clarifying  the  mind,  but  it  would  be  a 
good  rule  that  every  minister  should  have 
a  thorough  training  in  mental  philosophy, 
and  continue  his  reading  in  that  develop- 
ment until  he  has  reached  middle  age. 
He  must  be  very  careful,  however,  to  keep 
philosophy  out  of  his  sermons,  where  it  is 
an  alien  and  an  offence. 

[A  course  of  sermons  on  the  meta- 
physics of  faith,  followed  by  another  on 
the  philosophy  of  prayer,  will  go  far  to 
make  infidels  of  a  congregation.  One 
wants  his  drinking-water  taken  through  a 
filter-bed,  but  greatly  objects  to  gravel  in 
his  glass.] 

The  third  canon  is  Beauty ;  and  there 
is  no  audience  which  does  not  expect  a 
certain  elevation  of  style  in  religious 
speech,  and  which  does  not  resent  what  is 

vulgar  or  technical.     A  preacher  does  not 

48 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A   SERMON 

conciliate  an  uneducated  audience  by  the 
use  of  slang  or  lapses  into  buffoonery, 
nor  does  he  please  cultured  people  by 
scholastic  terms.  People  have  an  instinct 
about  what  they  like  to  hear  from  the  pul- 
pit, and  their  desire  is  the  language  of  the 
home  and  the  market-place,  raised  to  its 
highest  power  and  glorified.  Every  strong 
and  clean  word  used  of  the  people  as  they 
buy  and  sell,  joy  and  sorrow,  labour  and 
suffer,  should  be  in  the  preacher's  store, 
but  he  should  add  thereto  splendid  and 
gracious  words  from  Milton  and  Spenser, 
from  Goldsmith  and  Addison,  and  other 
masters  of  the  English  tongue.  The 
ground  may  be  a  homely  and  serviceable 
grey,  but  through  it  should  run  a  thread 
of  gold.  People  have  a  just  satisfac- 
tion in  seeing  their  best  words  serving  in 
great  affairs,  and  receive  a  shock  of  delight 
when  now  and  again  a  word  of  royal  car- 
riage mingies  with  the  throng. 

Certain  preachers  enrich  their  sermons 

49 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

with  quotations,  and  a  stately  line  has 
often  fitly  crowned  an  argument.  But 
this  habit  calls  for  delicacy  and  reticence. 
When  the  sentence  of  some  loved  writer 
occurs  to  one  as  he  is  thinking  out  his  dis- 
course, and  he  uses  it  as  the  expression  of 
his  own  mind,  then  it  becomes  a  part  of 
the  pattern,  and  is  more  than  justified. 
When  he  stops  at  intervals,  and  goes  in 
search  of  such  passages,  the  quotation  is 
then  foreign  to  his  thinking,  it  is  a  tag  of 
embroidery  stitched  on  the  garment.  It 
is  said  that  there  are  ingenious  books 
which  contain  extracts — very  familiar,  as 
a  rule — on  every  religious  subject,  so  that 
the  minister,  having  finished  his  sermon 
on  Faith  or  Hope,  has  only  to  take  down 
this  pepper-caster  and  flavour  his  some- 
what bare  sentences  with  literature.  If 
this  ignominious  tale  be  founded  on  fact, 
and  be  not  a  scandal  of  the  enemy,  then 
the  Protestant  Church  ought  also  to  have 

an    Index  Expurgatorius,  and  its  central 

50 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A    SERMON 

authorities  insert  therein  books  which  it  is 
inexpedient  for  ministers  to  possess.  In 
this  class  should  be  included  '  The  Gar- 
land of  Quotations '  and  '  The  Reservoir  of 
Illustrations,'  and  it  might  be  well  if  the 
chief  of  this  important  department  should 
also  give  notice  at  fixed  times  that  such 
and  such  anecdotes,  having  been  worn 
threadbare,  are  now  withdrawn  from  cir- 
culation. The  cost  of  this  office  would 
be  cheerfully  defrayed  by  the  laity. 

Illustrations  are  of  the  last  value  to  a 
sermon,  because  they  both  give  colour  to 
the  style  and  interest  to  the  thought,  and 
the  preacher  ought  to  practise  the  art 
with  diligence.  One  man  will  carry  a 
subject  for  a  week  and  never  once  detect 
an  analogy  in  the  life  around  him,  be- 
cause his  mind  is  hermetically  sealed. 
Another  man  will  be  overwhelmed  by  the 
wealth  of  analogy  thrust  on  him  from  the 
books  he  reads,  from  scenes  on  the  way- 
side, from  the  country  during  an  hour's 
51 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

visit,  from  five  minutes  in  a  manufactory, 
from  the  sight  of  a  vessel  unloading,  from 
a  conversation  overheard  in  a  public  con- 
veyance ;  nature,  life,  commerce,  litera- 
ture, conspire  to  interpret  his  theme,  till 
amid  this  embarrassment  of  riches  he 
hardens  his  heart  and  grows  fastidious. 
He  is  fortunate  who  can  take  his  choice 
among  competing  illustrations  till  he  finds 
one  which  brings  out  the  exact  point  with 
felicity.  It  is  for  the  preacher  to  de- 
cide how  far  he  will  labour  his  figure, 
which  can  be  given  either  in  a  sentence  or 
a  page,  and  he  will  be  guided  by  the  com- 
position of  his  congregation.  One  may 
lay  it  down  as  a  rule  that  the  details  of  an 
illustration  should  be  in  inverse  propor- 
tion to  the  culture  of  the  hearers.  With 
uneducated  people  illustration  has  to  be 
expanded  into  description,  with  educated 
it  may  be  condensed  into  allusion.  Upon 
alert  and  sensitive  minds  the  speaker  sim- 
ply plays,  as  one  touches  the  keys  of  a 
52 


THE   TECHNIQUE    OF   A   SERMON 

piano,  when  the  note  sounds  without  fail ; 
but  sluggish  and  callous  minds  he  must 
galvanise  by  repeated  shocks  of  electricity. 
Illustration  is  either  panoramic  or  minia- 
ture painting,  but,  on  the  whole,  must  be 
on  the  larger  rather  than  on  the  smaller 
scale.  Whether  it  be  description  or  allu- 
sion, the  illustration  is  never  to  be  used  as 
a  mere  opportunity  of  displaying  the 
speaker's  eloquence  or  learning.  It  is  not 
a  pyrotechnic  display  before  which  a  crowd 
stands  in  admiration,  but  a  lamp  by  whose 
light  the  traveller  finds  his  way  along  the 
dark  street. 

The  fourth  canon  is  Humanity.  One 
has  heard  able  and  pious  sermons  which 
might  as  well  have  been  preached  in  Mars, 
for  any  relation  they  had  to  our  life  and 
environment.  They  suggested  the  address 
a  disembodied  spirit  might  give  to  his 
brethren  in  the  intermediate  state,  where 
it  is  alleged  we  shall  exist  without  phys- 
ical correspondence.     This   detached    ser- 

53 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

mon  is  the  only  credible  evidence  for  such 
an  unimaginable  state,  but  otherwise  it 
does  not  appear  effective.  While  the 
preacher  should  be  very  sparing  with  /,  it 
ought  to  be  possible  for  an  expert  to  com- 
pose a  biography  of  him  from  a  year's 
sermons. 

[If  the  minister  desires  to  give  a  per- 
sonal experience  he  can  say  '  one,'  or  '  a 
man, '  and  if  his  people  suspect  the  iden- 
tity it  is  no  matter.  They  have  been  de- 
livered from  the  perpetual  '  I '  which 
devastates  some  men's  utterances,  and 
from  whose  monotonous  boom  you  never 
escape.] 

If  one  live  in  the  country  he  ought  to 
master  ploughing,  and  sowing,  and  har- 
vesting; if  he  reside  in  a  seaport,  he 
ought  to  know  the  docks,  with  their 
strange  cargoes  and  foreign  vessels  ;  if  his 
work  be  in  a  manufacturing  city,  he 
ought  to  have  learned  the  processes  ;  and 
if  his  lot  be  cast  in  a  fishing  village,  then 

54 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A  SERMON 

it  is  a  reflection  on  him  should  he  not 
understand  the  sailing  of  a  boat.  The 
minister  ought  to  be  soaked  in  life ; 
not  that  his  sermons  may  never  escape 
from  local  details,  but  rather  that,  being 
in  contact  with  the  life  nearest  him, 
he  may  state  his  gospel  in  terms  of  human 
experience.  No  doctrine  of  the  Christian 
Faith  is  worth  preserving  which  cannot  be 
verified  in  daily  life,  and  no  doctrine  will 
need  to  be  defended  when  stated  in  human 
terms — above  all,  in  the  language  of 
Home.  The  principle  of  vicarious  sacri- 
fice, for  instance — that  one  person  should 
get  good  from  another's  sufferings, — may 
be  proved  to  be  true  by  texts  of  Holy 
Scripture,  and  it  may  also  be  shown  to  be 
absurd  by  argument,  but  it  may  be  placed 
beyond  criticism  by  reference  to  a  mother, 
through  whose  sufferings  and  self-denial 
the  child  lives  and  comes  to  strength.  It 
was  Jesus'  felicitous  manner  to  remove 
His  Evangel  from  the  sphere  of  abstract 

55 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

discussion,  and  to  assert  its  reasonableness 
in  the  sphere  of  life.  '  What  man  among 
you?'  was  His  favourite  plea.  God  does 
exactly  what  a  man  does  or  wants  to  do 
when  he  is  at  his  best.  The  divinity  of  a 
sermon  is  in  proportion  to  its  humanity. 

Our  fifth  canon  is  Charity,  for  surely  if 
any  form  of  human  speech  should  be  free 
from  anger  and  bitterness  it  is  a  sermon. 
We  may  not  deny  that  there  is  a  time  and 
use  for  invective,  since  we  have  all  read 
the  stern  raillery  with  which  the  Prophets 
pursued  idolaters.  Perhaps  the  most  per- 
fect passage  of  sarcasm  in  literature  is  the 
forty-fourth  chapter  of  Isaiah,  and  of 
denunciation  the  twenty-third  chapter  of 
St.  Matthew's  Gospel.  There  comes  a 
time  when  carnal  and  ill-doing  people 
must  be  punished ;  and  the  tongue  is  a 
fiery  lash.  Jesus  had  done  His  best  to 
conciliate  and  w^in  the  Pharisees  from 
their  crooked  ways,  and  now,  in  despair  of 

their  reformation,  He  lets  loose   His  in- 

56 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A   SERMON 

dignation.  Doubtless,  in  His  anger,  as  in 
His  love,  Jesus  is  our  perfect  example, 
but  it  is  well  for  His  disciples  to  remem- 
ber that  anger  is  much  more  risky  than 
love.  He  is  a  poor  creature  who  cannot 
be  angry,  and  who  is  not  ready  to  chal- 
lenore  wanton  evil-doers.  The  thunder- 
storm  has  its  function,  but  let  it  be  brief, 
and  be  followed  by  the  clear  shining 
after  rain.  Sarcasm  serves  so  little  pur- 
pose, and  does  so  much  mischief,  that  it 
had  better  be  left  out  of  the  preacher's 
medicine-chest.  People  cannot  be  turned 
from  sin  by  gibes,  nor  scourged  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God  by  sneers.  It  seemeth 
to  us,  when  we  are  still  young,  both 
clever  and  profitable  to  make  a  hearer 
ashamed  of  his  sin  by  putting  him  in  the 
pillory  and  pelting  him  with  epithets. 
Such  is  the  incurable  perversity  of  human 
nature,  that  the  man  grows  worse  under 
the  discipline,  and  even  conceives  an  un- 
conscionable   dislike    to    the    officer     of 

57 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

justice.  As  we  grow  older  and  see  more 
of  life  it  seems  easier  to  put  a  man  out 
of  conceit  with  his  sin  by  showing  him 
the  winsome  and  perfect  form  of  good- 
ness. So  full  of  surprises  is  human  nature 
that  he  will  loathe  himself  and  be  drawn 
to  the  preacher,  and,  best  of  all,  love 
righteousness.  He  that  scolds  in  the 
pulpit,  or  rails,  only  irritates ;  he  that 
appreciates  and  persuades  wins  the  day. 
No  man  is  more  heartily  detested  than 
^  a  sarcastic  minister.  And  let  it  not  be 
thought  that  the  rasping  preacher  is  the 
alone  faithful  voice.  Gentleness  can  be 
very  severe,  and  he  that  has  tact  may 
say  what  he  pleases.  What  people  want, 
of  every  class  and  in  every  land,  is  com- 
fort, and  he  that  deals  kindly  then  will 
have  their  hearts  and  their  lives. 

For  our  sixth  canon  we  take  Delivery, 
and  here  we  touch  on  the  vexed  question 
of  spoken  vers7cs  read  sermons.     If  it  be 

fairly  stated  it  is  at  once  decided.     It  is 

58 


THE    TECHNIQUE    OF   A   SERMON 

not  whether  a  sermon  ought  to  be  pre- 
pared with  the  utmost  ability  of  the  minis- 
ter, or  whether  he  should  say  anything 
that  occurs  to  him  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment.  Nor  is  it  whether  he  had  better 
write  his  sermon,  or  think  it  out  carefully, 
and  clothe  his  thought  with  words  in  the 
pulpit.  And  it  is  not  whether  some  few 
men  are  not  able  to  do  both  themselves 
and  their  thinking  greater  justice  by  read- 
ing what  they  have  prepared  to  their 
people.  The  exact  question  is,  whether, 
after  the  average  man  has  studied  his 
sermon,  and  done  his  best  by  it,  he  ought 
to  read  the  result  or  say  what  is  in  him  to 
his  hearers  face  to  face.  The  pew  is 
unanimous  in  favour  of  delivery,  and  the 
pew  is  right. 

["Here  and  there  one  meets  a  person 
who  wishes  that  all  ministers  would 
read,  but  the  explanation  most  likely  is 
that  his  nervous  system  had  been  shat- 
tered   by    sitting    under    a    minister  who 

59 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

Stammered,  or  collapsed  at  critical  pas- 
sages.] 

No  one  outside  the  pulpit  ever  attempts 
to  influence  a  popular  audience  from  a 
paper,  and  he  who  makes  the  attempt  from 
the  pulpit  suffers  gratuitous  loss.  He 
does  not  gather  the  encouragement  of  the 
people's  faces,  and  they  miss  the  appeal  of 
his  eyes.  He  is  not  able  to  utilise  every 
puff  of  wind  in  the  sensitive  atmosphere, 
as  one  can  who  holds  the  rope  of  his  sail 
in  one  hand  and  has  his  other  hand  on  the 
helm — alert  and  watchful.  He  can  catch 
no  happy  inspiration  :  he  can  avoid  no  un- 
expected disaster  :  he  can  turn  aside  to  no 
pleasant  bay,  but  must  go  straight  ahead. 

An    audience    creates    an    atmosphere 

which,  after  a  little  experience,   one  can 

feel  with    such    accuracy  that   he   knows 

when  they  are  with  him  or  against  him. 

Audience  and  speaker  act  and    react  on 

one  another,   so  that   a  supercilious   and 

frigid  people  can  chill  the  most  fiery  soul, 
60 


THE   TECHNIQUE   OF   A   SERMON 

while  a  hundred  warm-hearted  folk  can 
make  a  plain  man  eloquent. 

The  reader  has  his  own  advantages,  for 
he  could  preach  his  sermon  to  fifty  people 
in  a  church  holding  fifteen  hundred,  or 
even  address  his  peroration  to  a  deaf  and 
dumb  asylum  :  the  speaker  has  his  disad- 
vantages, for  he  must  reckon  upon  an 
occasional  break-down,  and  he  cannot 
hope  to  preserve  such  finish  of  style  as 
might  be  found  in  his  manuscript.  It  may 
indeed  be  admitted  that  speaking  is  an  act 
of  sacrifice  in  which  the  preacher  gains 
nothing  for  himself  and  may  lose  much, 
but  in  that  self-mortification,  by  which  the 
message  gains  and  he  loses,  his  strength 
may  be  found. 

The  last  and  greatest  canon  of  speaking 
is  Intensity,  and  it  will  be  freely  granted 
that  the  want  of  present-day  preaching  is 
spiritual  passion.  Of  intellectual  and  social 
passion  there  is  enough  in  the  pulpit,  and 
one  has  even  been  amazed  at  the  most 

6i 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

Strange  of  all  enthusiasms,  critical  passion, 
when  a  preacher  has  become  quite  hot  over 
the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch.  What 
is  wanting,  and  what  cannot  be  wanted,  is 
the  sense  of  the  unseen  and  eternal — of 
the  everlasting  love  of  God,  the  atoning 
sacrifice  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  un- 
speakable value  of  a  single  soul,  the  infi- 
nite pathos  of  human  life,  the  tenderness  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  and  the  graciousness  of 
the  Evangel  Bathed  in  such  springs  of 
profound  emotion,  no  man  will  be  able  to 
preach  without  tears,  which  will  be  all  the 
more  affecting  if  they  be  in  the  heart 
rather  than  in  the  eyes.  He  will  need  no 
tricks  of  acting,  for  through  his  broken 
accents  will  be  heard  the  voice  of  God, 
and  he  himself  will  slip  out  of  sight  and 
be  forgotten,  like  the  unknown  monk  who 
in  a  European  cathedral  drops  the  curtain 
from  a  sacred  picture  and  leaves  his  charge 

face  to  face  with  the  Crucified. 

62 


PROBLEMS   OF    PREACHING 


CHAPTER    III 

PROBLEMS    OF    PREACHING 

It  is  useful  to  devote  a  section  of  one's 
working  library  to  Christian  Biography, 
both  ancient  and  modern,  and  to  reinforce 
it  carefully  from  time  to  time.  We  may 
not  gain  much  inspiration  in  thinking,  or 
much  guidance  in  working,  because  the 
conditions  of  thought  and  service  are  so 
different ;  but  this  reading  acts  as  a  fly- 
wheel in  our  feverish  religious  life,  in 
checking  hasty  impulses  and  saving  us 
from  fits  of  depression.  There  are  mo- 
ments, however,  when  the  calmness  and 
regularity  of  the  worthies  of  last  genera- 
tion drive  us  to  despair,  as  when  one  reads 
from  the  diary  of  the  Rev.  Joseph  Tomlin- 

son,  in  the  memorial  volume  issued  after 
65 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

his  death,  and  much  valued  by  his  congre- 
gation : — 

'  December  lo  [Monday). — Rose  at  5.30,  although 
tempted  to  remain  in  bed  owing  to  the  darkness 
and  cold.  Completed  the  first  head  of  my  sev- 
enth sermon  in  the  course  on  Sanctification 
before  breakfast.  Have  now  sermons  prepared 
for  the  next  three  months,  and  note  with  thank- 
fulness that  I  can  produce  three  sheets  hourly 
without  fail.' 

The  good  man  died  in  the  fifties,  at  the 
age  of  eighty-six,  having  preached  till  ten 
days  before  his  death,  and  never  having 
been  once  out  of  his  pulpit  through  sick- 
ness ;  and  one  has  a  distinct  vision  of  him 
moving  about  with  great  authority  and 
dignity  among  his  people,  and  a  vague 
recollection  of  his  thundering  in  a  sermon 
aorainst  those  who  denied  creation  in  six 
literal  days, — 'which  showed  to  what  a 
height  of  insolent  audacity  infidelity  was 
rising  in  those  days.' 

This   early  rising,  which    is    a    marked 

66 


PROBLEMS    OF    PREACHING 

feature  in  such  biographies,  and  a  needless 
irritation  unto  the  generations  follow- 
ing— this  turning  out  of  sermons  by 
machinery,  in  longhand-writing  without  an 
erasure,  and  sometimes  on  pink  paper — 
this  immunity  from  perplexing  questions — 
this  infallibility  in  doctrine,  as  well  as  the 
fixed,  smooth,  untroubled  face  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  book,  suggest  an  atmos- 
phere very  different  from  that  in  which  we 
think  and  labour. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  preaching 
must  be  the  same  in  all  ages,  dealing  as  it 
does  with  the  everlasting  Evangel  of  the 
Divine  Love.  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
preaching  must  differ  with  every  age,  ad- 
dressed as  it  ought  to  be  to  the  changing 
conditions  of  life  and  thought.  Christ  is 
not  one,  but  many  ;  and  therein  He  has 
proved  Himself  the  Son  of  Man  and  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.  There  is  the  Eternal 
Spirit,  which  is   the  Spirit   of   God,  and 

there  is  the  Time  spirit,  which  is  the  spirit 
67 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

of  man.  He  who  feels  the  breath  of  the 
human  spirit  only  is  a  secularist — there  are 
such,  although  they  know  it  not,  in  the 
Christian  pulpit, — and  he  who  feels  the 
breath  of  the  Divine  Spirit  only  is  an 
ascetic.  It  is  best  when  the  soul  lies  open 
to  both  influences,  for  so  the  preacher  is 
in  touch  with  God  and  man,  a  go-between 
and  mediator. 

It  ought  to  be  frankly  recognised  that 
preaching  is  a  much  harder  task  for  us 
than  it  was  for  our  fathers.  The  critical 
spirit  was  not  then  abroad,  but  was  con- 
fined to  students'  rooms.  Neither  accept- 
ed rules  of  Christian  living  nor  funda- 
mental doctrines  of  Christian  faith  were 
questioned.  Controversy  had  only  to  do 
with  ecclesiastical  affairs  or  conflicting 
theories  of  orthodoxy.  Preaching  moved 
in  an  atmosphere  of  social  conventionality 
and  religious  authority,  when  people  knew 
what  to  expect  and  the  minister  said  what 
was    expected.       The    channel   was  well 

6S 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

buoyed  and  lit,  and  the  vessel  never  went 
beyond  the  bar,  so  that  the  river-trips  were 
quite  safe  and  uneventful.  To-day  a  re- 
ligious teacher  makes  for  the  open  sea, 
and  people  feel  in  every  sermon  the 
swell  of  the  Atlantic.  It  is  an  exhilarating 
and  invigorating  experience,  but  has  its 
hazards  for  hearers  and  its  anxieties  for  the 
preacher.  Never  could  there  have  been 
any  time  when  he  required  to  be  so  fear- 
less and  honest,  and  at  the  same  time  so 
reverent  and  careful.  When  a  man  carries 
his  own  life  and  the  lives  of  others  in  his 
hand,  he  may  well  pray  for  humility  and 
the  mind  of  Christ.  One  very  practical 
question  is,  how  far  the  preacher  is  to  for- 
get his  own  individitality ,  or  how  far  he 
must  subordinate  it  to  the  general  claims 
of  truth.  It  may  be  contended,  with  some 
show  of  reason,  that  a  teacher  of  Chris- 
tianity is  bound,  in  the  discharge  of  his 
duty,   to  expound  every    doctrine  of    the 

faith  in  order,  and  to  explain  the  various 

69 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

experiences  of  the  soul — as  a  professor  of 
physics  must  take  his  students  through 
statics  and  dynamics,  although  his  own 
preference  may  be  for  heat  or  light.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  ever  to  be  remembered 
that  the  atmospheric  conditions  of  science 
and  religion  are  different,  and  that  a 
minister  cannot  teach  doctrines  with  which 
he  has  no  affinity,  or  moods  through 
which  he  has  never  passed. 

What  may  be  called  the  universal  theory 
of  preaching  used  to  obtain,  and  still  lies 
as  a  burden  on  many  ministers.  None 
can  tell,  except  those  who  have  gone 
through  the  purgatory,  what  it  was  for  one 
man  to  hammer  out,  bit  by  bit,  a  sermon 
on  Justification  by  Faith,  while  he  longed 
to  be  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount ;  or 
for  another  to  struggle  with  a  Beatitude 
which  was  ever  eluding  the  doctrinal  net, 
while  he  would  fain  have  been  revelling 
in    the    early    chapters    of    the    Roman 

Epistle.     Ministers   are    still    living,    and 

70 


PROBLEMS    OF   PREACHING 

not  yet  on  the  retired  list,  who  can  recall 
the  time  when  the  following  was  the  pre- 
scription for  a  sermon  : — 

Recipe 

Tinct.  Hodgii       .         .         oz.  j 

Aquae  ad         .         .         .     oz.  vj 

Misce  et  signetur. 

One  table-spoonful  morning  and  afternoon. 

The  colouring  material  might  vary  with 
the  communion,  but  the  principle  of  the 
composition  would  be  the  same.  Any 
variation  on  this  formula  was  regarded 
with  suspicion  as  theological  quackery, 
and  condemned  by  authorities.  One  re- 
sult of  this  regime  was  to  utterly  dis- 
hearten some  young  ministers,  and  move 
them  to  abandon  their  life-work  in  despair. 
What  happened  in  one  case  must  have 
happened  in  many,  but  it  is  hoped  will 
soon  be  incredible.  A  lad  goes  from  a 
theological  college,  who  has  not  yet  found 
his    metier,    and    has    never   preached    a 

sermon.       What    his    message    may    be 
71 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

neither  he  nor  any  man  can  tell,  but  he  is 
quivering  with  ideas  and  dreams.  He  is 
appointed  assistant  in  a  city  church,  and 
counts  himself  fortunate  because  the 
minister  is  distinguished  for  personal  piety 
and  devoted  service  in  the  Evangel. 
From  time  to  time  he  has  to  preach,  and 
under  the  direction  and  example  of  his 
chief  he  takes  in  turn  the  classical  texts  of 
the  evangelical  faith,  to  find  that  they  do 
not  hold  him,  and  that  he  does  not  hold 
the  people.  He  has  searchings  of  heart 
and  gloomy  forebodings.  Is  any  man  fit 
to  be  a  messenger  of  Christ  who  can  be 
dull,  commonplace,  'feckless,'  on  'Behold 
the  Lamb  of  God,  Who  taketh  away  the 
sin  of  the  world '  ? 

One  week  he  goes  afield,  and  comes  on 
the  raising  of  the  widow's  son,  and  in- 
stantly catches  fire.  He  creates  the  situ- 
ation in  his  heart,  and  cannot  rest  till  he 
has  committed  to  paper  the  emotions  that 

possess   and  master  him.     A  year  ago  he 
72 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

had  lost  his  mother.  On  Sunday  he  enters 
the  pulpit  charged  with  power,  and  with 
his  first  sentence  the  people  are  welded  to 
him  in  a  common  sympathy.  His  subject 
is  an  incident  which  cleanses,  sweetens,  in- 
spires humanity,  and  he  knows  what  it  is 
to  preach.  Next  morning  he  receives  six 
letters — to  the  end  of  his  life  he  well  re- 
members that  budget :  one  is  from  a 
mother  whose  son  has  been  spared  through 
a  dangerous  illness,  to  say  he  had  ex- 
pressed her  thankfulness ;  one  is  from  a 
mother  whose  son  died,  to  tell  him  that  he 
has  convinced  her  of  the  sympathy  of 
Jesus — both  women  want  to  see  him  ;  one 
is  from  a  son  whose  mother  is  dead,  and 
who  counts  her  life  the  means  of  his  sal- 
vation— he  thought  she  was  in  church 
with  him  ;  one  is  from  a  son  who  has 
sinned  against  his  mother,  and  he  is  going 
home  to  see  her  that  day — both  men  will 
drop  in  to  see  him  if  he  doesn't  mind.  All 
four  will  have  a  question  to  ask — How  did 

73 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

he  know?  The  two  other  letters  are 
anonymous.  One  from  '  a  well-wisher,' 
anxious  to  know  how  any  minister  can 
reconcile  it  with  his  conscience  to  offer 
hungry  souls  empty  sentiment  instead  of 
bread ;  and  the  other  from  '  a  simple 
Christian,'  complaining  that  no  reference 
has  been  made  to  conversion,  which  the 
writer  points  out  is  the  vital  point  in  the 
story  of  the  widow's  son.  Both  letters 
state  that  the  sermon  has  given  much  dis- 
satisfaction to  the  congregation.  Had  he 
been  ten  years  older  he  would  have  put 
the  two  letters  in  the  fire  without  a 
thought,  and  the  four  in  his  desk,  to  cheer 
him  when  he  was  weary.  Four  letters 
were  positive — testifying  to  good  received  : 
they  value  250  marks  each ;  two  letters 
were  negative — testifying  to  no  good  re- 
ceived :  they  value  o.  If  so  many  people 
have  been  cured,  it  is  of  no  importance 
that    so    many  more    people   criticise  the 

medicine.      The  testimony   of   one  man, 

74 


PROBLEMS   OF    PREACHING 

that  he  was  blind  and  now  saw,  obliterates 
the  opposition  of  the  Pharisees  who  insist 
on  a  pj'iori  grounds  that  Jesus  could  not 
have  opened  the  man's  eyes.  But  this 
lad,  more  impressed  than  he  will  be  later 
in  life  by  '  well-wishers '  and  '  simple 
Christians,'  consults  his  chief;  and  he, 
being  of  the  old  conventional  school,  and 
having  possibly  missed  the  appeal  to  two 
classes,  is  shaken,  and  thinks  there  was  a 
*  want'  He  advises  that,  whatever  may  be 
the  subject,  the  Gospel  should  be  brought 
in  at  some  point,  and  by  the  Gospel  he 
means  the  *  plan  of  salvation.'  Nor  is  the 
good  man  requiring  what  he  does  not 
practise,  for  it  was  his  glory  to  have  found 
the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Trinity  in  the 
Book  of  Esther  and  the  Atonement  in 
Ecclesiastes,  and  it  ought  to  be  added 
that  the  people  were  edified  by  both  dis- 
coveries. 

The  beginner  now  understands  that  he 
is  at  liberty   to    deal   with   any  subject — 

75 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

character,  intellect,  or  duty — if  he  has  an 
evangelical  conclusion.  His  next  sermon 
is  on  David  and  Jonathan,  and  his  eulo- 
gium  on  an  unselfish  and  heroic  friendship 
moves  the  congregation  visibly  ;  but  when, 
in  fidelity  to  his  instructions,  he  explains 
at  the  close  that  David  is  Christ  and  Jon- 
athan the  sinner,  he  feels  his  power  depart 
from  him  instantly,  and  even  the  spiritual 
do  not  sustain  him  with  any  enthusiasm. 
An  audience  has  a  sensitive  ear,  and  de- 
tects the  transition  from  reality  to  un- 
reality without  fail.  He  therefore  has  to 
decide  between  preaching  what  he  ought 
or  what  he  desires,  and  in  such  circum- 
stances he  had  better  preach  according  to 
his  bent,  without  fear  or  reserve. 

Because  a  man  must  fulfil  himself,  and 
if  God  has  made  him  St.  James  he  must 
not  nullify  himself  by  attempting  to  be 
St.  Paul.  Wings  suggest  the  air  and  fins 
the  water,  and  although  there  be  amphib- 
ious animals,  yet  one  prefers  to  see  a  swan 
76 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

on  a  lake  rather  than  on  the  dry  land. 
We  are  bound  to  credit  Providence  with 
some  intelligence  of  design,  and  if  the 
Bible  has  an  immense  variety  of  truths, 
and  the  human  mind  an  immense  variety 
of  gifts,  then  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude 
that  there  may  be  some  correspondence 
between  the  message  and  the  messenger. 
For  some  time  the  man  may  stumble 
about  in  search  of  his  line,  but  one  day  he 
will  strike  it,  as  when  the  wheels  of  a  car 
that  has  been  wandering  hither  and 
thither,  with  great  discomfort  to  the  pas- 
sengers, slip  into  the  grooves. 

It  is  not  at  all  to  be  feared  that  the 
preacher  who  confines  himself  to  his  own 
message  will  fail  to  preach  Christ.  Some 
one  has  said  that  there  is  a  road  from 
every  text  to  Christ,  and  this  saying  is 
true  ;  but  it  has  two  applications,  either 
that  the  preacher  should  start  from  the 
text  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Christ,  or  that  he 
should   so  deal  with  his  text  that  Christ 

77 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

shall  come  and  dwell  in  it.  Is  it  not 
known  to  all  that  one  may  cry  '  Lord, 
Lord'  without  ceasing  and  yet  Christ  be 
a  stranger,  and  that  another  may  not  men- 
tion His  name  and  the  fragrance  of 
Christ's  garments  be  felt  in  the  place? 
There  are  those  who  can  so  deal  with  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Lord  as  make  us  think 
of  a  work,  not  a  person,  and  those  who 
can  so  plead  for  almsgiving  as  to  bring  us 
face  to  face  with  Him  Who  knew  not 
where  to  lay  His  head.  The  evangelical 
character  of  a  sermon  does  not  depend  on 
its  subject,  but  on  its  tone,  for  whether 
the  theme  be  taken  from  Proverbs  or 
St.  John's  Gospel  the  sermon  of  a  Chris- 
tian preacher  should  live  and  move  and 
have  its  being  in  the  Lord.  Wherefore 
let  a  man  preach  on  any  text  between 
Genesis  and  Revelation  with  great  free- 
dom, if  so  be  that  he  abide  in  Christ. 
The  second  problem  \s  Popularity  :  how 

far  the  servant  of  the  Master  is  to  lay  him- 

78 


PROBLEMS    OF    PREACHING 

self  out  to  attract  an  audience,  and  what 
expedients  he  is  entitled  to  adopt.  We 
have  lived  to  see  the  relation  between 
preacher  and  hearer  reversed.  In  the  past 
a  congregation  was  obliged  to  listen  to 
their  minister  twice  on  Sunday,  although 
he  bored  them  nigh  unto  death  :  they  '  sat 
under  him,' to  use  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
phrases  in  religious  speech.  In  the  pres- 
ent a  congregation  will  attend  once  if 
they  like  the  preaching,  and  otherwise  will 
read  magazines  at  home.  The  people 
used  to  fill  the  pews  to  please  the  min- 
ister, who  very  soon  called  to  learn  the 
cause  of  their  absence.  Now  the  preacher 
is  apt  to  go  to  the  pulpit  to  please  the 
people,  who  will  brook  no  dictation  at 
his  hands.  There  was  a  day  when  the 
preacher  could  break  out  in  terrifying  lan- 
guage on  his  hearers  for  sleeping,  inatten- 
tion, and  such  like  faults.  People  are  too 
intelligent  and  well-bred  now  to  commit 
guch  breaches  of  good  taste  :  they  sleep  at 

79 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

home.  The  day  has  come  when  the  hear- 
ers estimate  the  preacher  as  if  he  were  a 
singer,  declaring  him  to  be  '  in  good  form,' 
or  '  a  Httle  flat'  The  one  indispensable 
quality  of  the  former  sermon  was  sound- 
ness— of  the  contemporary  sermon  that  it 
be  interesting.  If  the  speaker  has  a  light 
touch  and  a  graceful  manner,  if  he  be 
bright  and  vivacious,  above  all,  if  he  be 
never  tiresome,  then  he  will  be  approved. 
The  age  works  and  lives  at  high  pressure 
for  six  days,  and  on  the  seventh  reposes  to 
be  wearied  afresh  ;  and  just  as  it  has  the 
*  new  '  journalism  with  its  paragraphs,  and 
the  *  new '  magazines  with  their  short 
piquant  stories,  for  leisure  moments  of  the 
week,  the  age  requires  the  '  new '  sermon 
for  Sunday. 

One  does  not  of  course  blame  the  age 
because  it  insists  on  a  living  sermon,  but 
one  does  blame  the  preacher  who  dis- 
credits  the    noblest    themes    by    dulness. 

There  are  two  men  who  astonish  us :  one 

80 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

who  has  almost  nothing  to  give,  yet  serves 
up  his  morsel  so  daintily,  and  another 
who,  having  so  much,  offers  it  so  coarsely. 
Perhaps  the  hearer  nowadays  has  grown 
into  an  intellectual  bon  vivant ;  but  good 
cooking  is  very  appetising,  and  the  cook 
has  earned  some  reward.  Perhaps  one 
ought,  as  we  were  told  in  childhood, 
to  be  able  to  eat  anything,  but  it  requires 
a  very  strong  stomach  to  face  half-raw 
meat.  Some  strong  men,  both  in  learning 
and  piety,  really  do  all  that  is  possible  to 
alienate  an  audience  by  their  style  and 
manner,  and  they  can  have  no  complaint 
because  they  are  passed  by  and  left  alone. 
It  need  not  be  because  they  are  solid  :  it 
may  be  because  they  are  uncouth.  For 
there  are  certain  concessions,  besides  an 
easy  style,  that  even  the  most  scholarly 
and  rigid  preacher  may  make  to  this  gen- 
eration without  any  loss  of  self-respect. 
One  is  to  choose  an  attractive  title  for  his 
sermon,  and  announce  it  before  the  text. 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

A  title  is  a  happy  device,  for  it  lets  the 
people  know  the  subject,  and  saves  them 
from  weary  guessing  through  a  historical 
introduction,  and  it  gives  them  a  measure 
by  which  to  check  the  speaker's  relevancy. 
Another  is  to  acquire  the  art  of  elocution, 
which  really  is  not  born  with  us,  but  takes 
much  learning.  When  a  person  says  that 
he  likes  a  speaker,  he  as  often  simply 
means  that  he  has  heard  him,  and  it  is 
not  amazing  the  finest  passages  lose  their 
force  when  every  third  word  is  inaudible. 
And  a  third  quite  pardonable  expedient  is 
to  arrange  related  sermons  in  sets  or 
*  courses,'  because  the  development  and 
sequence  of  the  subject  sustains  the  inter- 
est and  gives  a  fillip  to  appetite. 

[Four,  or  at  most  six,  sermons  are  suf- 
ficient for  one  set :  the  people  lose  heart 
at  the  prospect  of  twelve  on  '  St.  Paul's 
Idea  of  Faith,'  or  sixteen  on  'Job.'  Dis- 
cretion has  to  be  used  in  the  title.     I  could 

not  personally  recommend  one  mentioned 
82 


PROBLEMS   OF    PREACHING 

to  me  by  a  pious  minister,  '  The  Limbs  of 
the  Almighty,'  although  he  assured  me  that 
it  had  enabled  him  to  include  some  strange 
texts,  and  that  it  had  been  much  blest.] 
Above  all  must  the  speaker  of  to-day  be 
clear,  terse,  forcible  ;  in  a  word,  real,  with- 
out cant  or  superfluity — a  good  leader- 
writer  on  religion. 

Certain  expedients  are,  however,  to  be 
deprecated,  and  ought  to  be  shunned  like 
sin.  One  is  wilful  eccentricity,  wherein  a 
preacher  without  wit  or  genius,  or  force 
or  earnestness,  outrages  every  canon  of 
good  manners  in  the  pulpit  in  order  to 
tickle  the  groundlings  and  secure  a  crowd. 
Another  is  vulgar  anecdotage  about  him- 
self or  his  family  or  his  experiences, — en- 
forced by  gross  personalities.  Another  is 
sensationalism  of  subject,  wherein  a  teach- 
er, leaving  the  Evangel  of  Christ,  lives 
upon  the  crimes  of  the  week,  hunting  the 
columns  of  the  evening  papers  for  some 

heading  which  will  gather  a  mob  and  a  col- 
83 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

lection.  The  excuse  which  such  charla- 
tans offer  for  this  travesty  of  preaching  is 
the  number  of  people  gathered  within 
hearing  of  the  Gospel,  but  they  ought  to 
know  perfectly  well  that  no  Gospel  is 
heard  and  no  good  done.  A  congrega- 
tion fed  on  this  highly  spiced  food  will 
relish  nothing  good  or  wholesome,  but 
will  ever  demand  hotter  and  fiercer  condi- 
ments, till  at  last  the  preacher  can  no 
longer  stimulate  the  debauched  palate,  and 
is  deserted.  Against  religious  sensation- 
alism, outre  sayings,  startling  advertise- 
ments, profane  words  and  irreverent  pray- 
ers, the  younger  ministry  must  make  an 
unflinching  stand,  for  the  sake  of  the 
Church  and  the  world,  for  the  sake  of  our 
profession  and  ourselves. 

Another  problem  is  Seciilarity^  and  on 
it  there  may  be  considerable  difference  of 
opinion  among  equally  honest  and  relig- 
ious men.     Ought  a  preacher,  as   a  rule, 

to   keep  within  the    subjects  which  were 
84 


PROBLEMS   OF    PREACHING 

the  burden  of  Christ,  or  ought  he  to  take 
considerable  latitude  in  dealing  with  the 
affairs  of  the  day  ?  It  is  a  very  practical 
question,  and  since  it  embraces  a  wide 
range  of  instances,  politics  may  be  taken 
as  a  test  case.  Suppose  it  be  assumed 
that  every  minister  is  also  a  patriot,  and 
devoted  to  the  commonwealth,  is  it  his 
part  to  discuss  politics  in  the  pulpit,  or, 
while  retaining  his  personal  convictions, 
and  giving  them  effect  by  his  own  vote,  is 
it  for  him  to  be  absolutely  neutral  in  pub- 
lic speech  ?  On  the  one  side  it  can  be 
urged  with  much  force  that  when  a  man 
becomes  a  minister  he  ought  not  to  forego 
one  privilege  or  fail  in  one  duty  of  citizen- 
ship ;  that,  as  a  leader  of  men,  he  ought 
to  guide  his  people  in  this  high  affair ; 
that  politics,  of  all  departments,  needs  the 
presence  and  influence  of  clean-handed, 
single-hearted  men  ;  and  that,  whatever  be 
the  case  with  the  Church,  the  Kingdom  of 

God  has  to  do  with  the  whole  life  of  the 

85 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

community.  The  conclusion  therefore  is 
that  a  minister  ought  to  be  in  the  very- 
thick  of  poHtics. 

On  the  other  side  it  may  be  pleaded 
that  it  is  hardly  possible  for  a  minister  to 
take  any  share  in  politics  without  being 
involved  in  the  doubtful  compromises  and 
manoeuvres  to  which  all  parties  are  in- 
clined ;  that  his  habits  of  thought  and 
lines  of  study  to  a  large  extent  incapaci- 
tate him  for  practical  politics  ;  that,  while 
there  are  exceptions,  most  ministers  who 
have  become  politicians  have  lost  in 
spirituality  and  failed  in  their  own  work  ; 
that  the  abstention  of  one  class  from  active 
government,  for  certain  good  reasons, 
may  be  a  strength,  and  cannot  be  any  ap- 
preciable weakness,  to  the  State  ;  and  that 
Jesus,  although  devoted  to  His  nation, 
and  living  in  very  trying  circumstances, 
kept  Himself  markedly  aloof  from  the 
politics  of  His  day.  And  now  one  rea- 
sons that  the  ministers  had  better  follow 

86 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

the  example  of  the  Lord  and  the  Apos- 
tles. 

If  he  be  himself  led  to  this  idea  of  his 
duty  he  will  reap  one  singular  advantage. 
It  will  be  allowed  him,  as  one  secluded  from 
the  strife  of  parties,  and  as  one  against 
whom  no  charge  of  partiality  can  be 
brought,  to  inspire  his  people  from  time  to 
time  with  the  principles  of  righteousness 
which  lie  behind  all  measures,  with  the 
glorious  traditions  of  the  past,  in  which 
the  whole  nation  shares,  with  the  passion 
for  the  country's  good  which  ought  to  stir 
every  one  of  her  children,  with  that  feel- 
ing of  brotherhood  which  welds  all  classes 
into  unity.  He  will  stand  between  jealous 
interests  and  contending  parties  as  a 
mediator  making  peace,  as  a  prophet  lead- 
ing into  the  paths  of  righteousness. 

Our  next  problem  touches  the  modern 
outlook  upon  human  history  which  has 
been  given  to  the  Church  in  our  day,  and 

may  be  called  Solida^^ity.      In   our   boy- 

87 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

hood  the  Gospel  was  understood  to  deal 
with  the  individual,  now  it  addresses  itself 
to  the  mass.  Religion  once  consisted  in 
saving  one's  self,  now  it  stands  in  sav- 
ing your  neighbour.  Christianity  once 
was  satisfied  with  a  healthy  soul,  it  has 
begun  to  demand  healthy  houses.  Preach- 
ing concerned  itself  with  the  spiritual  ex- 
periences of  penitence,  faith,  forgiveness, 
holiness  ;  it  has  travelled  to-day  into  ques- 
tions of  capital  and  wages,  international 
arbitration,  reorganisation  of  society,  and 
the  improvement  of  living.  It  is  not  now 
the  individual  but  the  race  who  is  before 
the  preacher. 

Two  absolutely  different  sermons,  with 
not  one  point  of  contact  save  Christ,  could 
be  preached  to-day  by  an  individualist  of 
the  old  school  and  a  solidarist  of  the  new, 
from  the  text,  '  Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  who 
labour  and  are  heavy  laden.'  One  would 
treat  of  a  person's  weary  conscience,  the 
other  of  the   multitude's  weary  life.     The 

88 


PROBLEMS    OF   PREACHING 

criticism  on  the  former  would  be,  '  Is  he 
living  in  the  present  world  ? '  on  the  latter, 
*  Does  he  believe  that  there  is  a  world  to 
come  ? ' 

When  tides  meet  there  is  broken  water, 
and  many  are  tossed  in  their  minds  as  to 
whether  the  pulpit  ought  to  give  its 
strength  to  the  regeneration  of  the  in- 
dividual or  of  society.  Certainly  it  were 
a  departure  from  the  method  of  our  Lord 
to  ignore  the  soul,  with  its  awful  respon- 
sibilities and  immense  possibilities,  to 
starve  the  inner  life,  which  is  the  spring  of 
all  good  thinking  and  working,  to  be 
silent  regarding  the  things  unseen  and 
eternal.  Suppose  by  the  insistence  of  the 
Church  it  could  be  brought  to  pass — which 
is  a  vain  expectation — that  every  man 
should,  in  any  measurable  period  of  time, 
be  well  fed  and  dressed  and  housed,  should 
be  free  from  disease,  idleness,  weariness, 
should  have  equal  rights,  privileges,  op- 
portunities with  his  neighbour,  then   this 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

bread-and-butter  paradise  were  a  poor  ex- 
change for  the  Eternal  Hope.  It  is  right 
to  say  that  the  Church  must  labour  to 
bring  heaven  here,  but  this  heaven  is  long 
of  coming,  and  meanwhile  the  Church 
must  comfort  the  oppressed,  the  suffering, 
the  beaten  in  this  present  battle,  with  the 
vision  of  the  City  of  Rest,  where  is  no 
more  pain,  neither  crying,  for  the  former 
things  have  passed  away.  A  policy  of 
sanitation  is  excellent,  but  it  cannot  replace 
the  Way  of  Salvation. 

Christ's  minister  must,  at  the  same  time, 
remember  that  he  is  the  representative  of 
the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth,  Who  had  a 
very  tender  compassion  for  the  proletariat, 
and  by  this  Spirit  has  led  them  all  those 
years  through  the  wilderness  to  the  bor- 
ders of  the  Promised  Land,  and  that  he  is 
the  legitimate  successor  of  those  Hebrew 
Prophets  who  were  the  champions  of  the 
poor  and  the  uncompromising  enemies  of 

tyrannical  wealth.      It  is  not  for  him  to 
90 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

Stir  up  strife  between  classes,  but  to  make 
peace,  yet  if  in  any  critical  conflict  be- 
tween the  poor  and  the  rich  the  minister 
of  Jesus  sides  with  the  strongest,  then 
hath  he  broken  his  commission,  and  for- 
saken his  Master.  If  the  Church  of  the 
Nazarene  lift  not  up  her  voice  on  behalf 
of  those  who  'labour  and  are  heavy  laden,' 
and  is  not  a  refuge  for  the  poor  and 
friendless,  what  good  is  she  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  ?  Nor  must  Christ's  evangelist 
forget  that  a  man  hath  a  body  as  well  as  a 
soul,  and  that  if  the  body  be  famished  for 
want  of  the  meat  which  perisheth,  his  soul 
may  not  be  able  to  receive  the  Bread  of 
Life,  and  that  it  is  all  very  well  to  exhibit 
the  excellent  glory  of  the  Christian  life, 
but  the  hearers  may  happen  to  live  in 
houses  where  it  is  physically  impossible  to 
be  a  Christian. 

The  Spirit  of  our  Master  is  with  us  and 
is  giving  a  wider  range  to  the  Evangel. 

We  are  being  taught  that  Jesus  did  not 
91 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

die  for  individuals  but  for  the  race,  and 
that  the  race  must  be  embraced  in  the 
service  of  the  Church ;  that  the  great 
social  movements  of  every  civilised  nation 
in  the  direction  of  physical  well-being,  are 
not  mere  outbreaks  of  ungodliness  and 
anarchy,  to  be  preached  at  and  shot  down, 
but  the  will  of  God,  Who  is  the  Father  of 
the  East  end  as  much  as  of  the  West,  and 
whose  good  gifts  belong  to  all  His  chil- 
dren ;  that  the  Incarnation  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  contains  a  wealth  of  blessing 
for  humanity  which  is  only  beginning  to 
be  revealed,  and  constitutes  the  one 
stable  and  fruitful  bond  of  brotherhood  ; 
and  that  in  the  Risen  Lord  lies  the  power 
for  the  redemption  and  glorification  of 
human  life. 
V  A  fifth  and  very  acute  problem  arises 
/  from  the  critical  spirit  which  has  been 
affecting  the  ministry  for  at  least  five- 
and-twenty  years,    and   perhaps  the  time 

has    come    for   describing  it  as  the  prob- 

92 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

lem  of  Pedantry.  Is  it  expedient,  in  the 
sense  of  being  useful  to  an  ordinary  con- 
gregation, and  is  it  necessary,  in  the  sense 
of  being  incumbent  on  a  minister's  con- 
science, to  unload  upon  the  people  his 
studies  in  Biblical  criticism  ?  It  is  quite 
open  for  a  minister  to  say,  '  My  people 
have  certain  ideas  regarding  the  literary 
construction  of  the  Bible  which  are  quite 
exploded,  and  I  have  at  my  disposal  infor- 
mation which  would  illuminate  the  whole 
circumstances  of  the  Book.  If  I  withhold 
this  knowledge  for  any  reason — especially 
through  the  fear  of  man — then  I  do  in- 
justice to  myself,  who  have  failed  in  my 
duty  as  a  teacher,  and  to  my  pupils,  who 
might  in  after  years  reproach  me  bitterly.* 
So  this  faithful  student  prepares  a  course 
on  the  composition  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
another  on  the  non-Davidic  authorship  of 
the  Psalms,  with  many  a  careful  little  ex- 
cursus into  literary  details  in  ordinary  ser- 
mons. 

93 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

Another  minister,  and  let  it  be  granted 
that  he  is  perfectly  honest  also,  takes  up 
an  opposite  position.  '  What  do  my  con- 
gregation, being  practical  people,  care 
about  the  date  and  authorship  of  the 
books  of  the  Bible,  if  they  can  obtain  the 
spiritual  kernel  contained  in  such  husks  ? 
And  as  for  myself,  until  the  higher  critics 
agree  among  themselves  and  give  us 
facts,  I  propose  to  leave  their  speculations 
severely  alone.'  Then  this  preacher  treats 
each  portion  of  Scripture  either  in  com- 
plete independence  of  environment,  or  in 
a  setting  of  baseless  traditions ;  and  he 
will  delight  a  certain  type  of  hearers  by 
occasionally  making  contemptuous  refer- 
ences to  critics  and  all  their  works. 

After  this  pleading  from  opposite  sides, 
one  arrives  at  the  following  conclusions  : — 

(a)  That  while  many  of  its  theories 
have  been  discredited,  or  are  doubtful, 
criticism  has  made  a  large  and  solid  con- 
tribution to  our  knowledge  of  the  Bible. 

94 


PROBLEMS   OF   PREACHING 

(5)  That  the  Church  ought  to  be  most 
thankful  to  those  pious  and  learned  men 
who  have  laboured  at  great  cost,  not  only 
of  time,  but  also  of  comfort  and  reputa- 
tion, in  this  department  of  sacred  letters. 

(c)  That  for  any  teacher  of  the  Bible  to 
ignore  or  disparage  the  reliable,  or  even 
probable,  results  of  criticism,  and  not  to 
give  them  to  his  people,  is  a  serious  neg- 
lect of  duty. 

(d)  That  to  instruct  an  average  congre- 
gation in  the  details  of  Biblical  criticism 
would  be  tiresome  and  irritating,  as  well 
as  arid  and  unedifying  to  the  last  degree. 

(e)  That  an  occasional  lecture  on  some 
misunderstood  book,  say  the  prophecy  of 
Jonah — which  is  the  vindication  of  charity, 
— or  on  the  Song  of  Songs — which  is  the 
glorification  of  holy  love, — will  always 
command  interest  by  its  elevation  above 
details  and  its  living  humanity. 

(y)  That  careful  and  systematic  in- 
struction in  the  literary  and  historical  cir- 

95 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

cumstances  of  the  Bible  is  best  given  in 
classes  to  be  conducted  by  the  minister, 
and  where  the  pupils  can  have  the  full 
benefit  of  his  knowledge. 

(g)  That  a  minister,  while  pursuing  his 
studies  in  this  department  with  all  dili- 
gence, must  lay  it  to  heart  that  the  critical 
atmosphere  is  cold,  and  is  apt  to  chill  the 
Gospel ;  and  that  he  has  certainly  made 
no  gain,  but  a  great  loss,  who  can  prove 
the  existence  of  a  second  Isaiah,  but  has 
lost  the  tender  piety  of  his  fifty-third  chap- 
ter. 

What  is  wanted  above  everything  to-day 
y  .is  positive  preaching,  by  men  who  believe 
with  all  their  mind  and  heart  in  Jesus 
Christ.  If  a  man  has  any  doubt  about 
Christ  he  must  on  no  account  be  His  min- 
ister ;  and  if  one  in  the  ministry  be 
afflicted  from  time  to  time  by  failures  of 
faith,  let  him  consume  his  own  smoke 
and  keep  a  brave  face  in  the  pulpit.     The 

pulpit  is  not  the  place  for  discussing  sys- 
96 


»  PROBLEMS   OF    PREACHING 

terns  of  scepticism,  or  proving  the  instinc- 
tive truths  of  religion,  or  adjusting  the 
speculative  difficulties  of  Christianity,  or 
apologising  for  Christ.  Those  are  belated 
tactics. 

For  years  the  Church  has  been  on  her 
defence,  meeting  attacks  from  science, 
from  philosophy,  from  literature,  from  his- 
tory. We  render  thanks  to  God  for  the 
apologists  of  the  faith  who  have  done  their 
work  nobly  with  skill  and  nerve.  They 
have  held  the  ground  with  stubborn  cour- 
age :  it  is  now  time  for  the  cavalry  to  charge 
and  complete  the  victory.  We  have  de- 
fended and  explained  our  Lord  long 
enough ;  let  us  now  proclaim  Him,  and 
magnify  His  Cross  with  a  high  heart  and 
an  unshaken  voice  in   face  of   the  whole 

world. 

97 


THEOLOGY  THE  THEORY   OF 
RELIGION 


CHAPTER   IV 

THEOLOGY    THE    THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

Various  questions  must  occur  to  his  mind 
as  a  student  leaves  the  theological  college 
and  enters  on  the  work  of  the  holy  minis- 
try ;  and  this  is  not  the  least  important, 
What  am  I  to  do  with  my  theology  ?  Am 
I  to  regard  it  as  so  much  deck  cargo 
which  I  shall  jettison  as  soon  as  the  ship 
puts  to  sea,  or  as  the  ballast  which  steadies 
the  vessel  in  stormy  weather  ?  It  will  de- 
pend on  the  answer  whether  one  continues 
the  study  of  this  great  science  as  a  matter 
of  love,  and  remains  a  student  of  theology 
to  the  last  day  of  his  ministry,  or  abandons 
it  as  an  instrument  which  has  done  its 
work  and  can  be  replaced  by  some  other 
intellectual    whetstone,    say   literature   or 

lOI 


/- 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

social  economy.  Upon  the  face  of  it  one 
must  regret  a  wanton  waste  of  time  and 
labour,  if  the  fruits  of  three  years'  hard 
study  are  flung  aside,  and  do  not  become 
a  capital  of  knowledge  to  be  laid  out  at 
usury  in  the  practical  work  of  the  pulpit. 
Is  theology  a  merely  academic  science,  or 
has  theology  a  hold  upon  the  mind  of 
every  thinking  person  ?  Must  theology 
be  confined  to  a  man's  study,  or  can  it  be 
taught  in  the  market-place  with  our  high- 
est enthusiasm  ? 

Unfortunately  there  are  two  schools 
which  are  much  in  evidence,  and  which, 
for  different  reasons,  deprecate  theology. 
One  is  the  extreme  left  of  the  Christian 
Church,  whom  we  may  call  the  Rational- 
istic school — that  body  of  superior  persons 
who  are  understood  to  have  the  monopoly 
of  religious  culture,  and  are  accustomed 
to  regard  the  average  Christian  as  a  relig- 
ious Philistine.  With  them  the  Catholic 
creeds  are  simply  antiquarian  documents, 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

which  are  outside  criticism  and  demand 
very  gentle  handling.  One  of  course  uses 
different  standards  to  try  folklore  and 
philosophy.  The  great  Christian  doc- 
trines, so  slowly  and  carefully  created, 
have,  in  the  opinion  of  this  school,  no 
more  vitality  than  a  fossil  of  the  carbon- 
iferous period,  and  are  of  no  more  use 
than  a  battle-axe.  Theology  is  a  dead 
science,  which  is  disappearing  before  the 
advance  of  education,  along  with  astrology 
and  the  black  art.  It  will  be  replaced  by 
ethics  and  sociology,  when  religion  is  re- 
duced to  '  morality  touched  by  emotion,' 
and  the  Church  of  Christ  is  a  Society  for 
the  cultivation  of  aesthetics.  St.  Augus- 
tine must  give  place  to  Marcus  Aurelius, 
and  Calvin  retire  in  favour  of  Comte. 
Do  not  disgust  intelligent  people  with 
metaphysical  speculations  ;  better  adhere 
to  questions  of  daily  duty,  and  for  a  relief 
take  up  '  a  living  wage '  and  the   lives  of 

the  poets.     Really  there  is  no  subject  this 
103 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

school  is  not  discussing  in  the  pulpit,  from 
Dante  to  Ibsen,  from  Home  Rule  to  Bi- 
metallism, with  one  severe  and  consistent 
exception,  and  that  is  the  master  themes 
which  have  engaged  the  intellect  and 
stirred  the  heart  of  the  Christian  Church 
for  nineteen  centuries. 

Theology  is  quite  as  distasteful  to  the 
extreme  right  of  the  Church,  which  re- 
gards religion  and  emotion  as  synonymous, 
and  may  be  described  as  the  Evangelistic 
school.  [Distinguish  between  Evangelical 
and  Evangelistic  :  the  former  is  a  generic 
word,  the  latter  specific,  the  one  covers  a 
country,  the  latter  defines  a  province.] 
Their  objection  is  not  that  our  science 
does  not  deserve  the  name,  but  that  every- 
thing like  ordered  thinking  is  a  foe  to 
spiritual  life.  They  regard  with  suspicion 
the  idea  that  the  Bible  is  a  literature 
gradually  evolved  through  the  action  of 
the  Divine  Spirit  on  the  religious  con- 
sciousness of  a  susceptible  people,  and 
104 


THE   THEORY    OF   RELIGION 

bitterly  resent  the  application  of  literary 
methods  to  its  criticism.  The  Book  is 
treated  as  if  it  had  been  given  in  a  piece, 
and  was  perfect  in  every  part,  so  that  a 
doctrine  can  be  proved  with  equal  cogency 
by  a  text  from  Genesis  or  from  the 
Gospels,  and  the  very  utterances  of  Jesus 
Himself  have  no  supreme  authority  over 
those  of  Isaiah  or  St.  Paul.  It  is  perhaps 
inevitable  that  from  a  standpoint  of  such 
extreme  simplicity  this  school  should  have 
little  sympathy  with  any  elaborate  treat- 
ment of  the  facts  of  our  faith,  being 
quite  convinced  that  the  mystery  of  Christ's 
Sacrifice  is  made  luminous  beyond  desire 
by  some  time-worn  illustration  of  a  person 
jumping  into  a  boat  or  throwing  himself 
from  a  burning  house.  When  this  spir- 
ited and  excellent  school  is  in  a  rampant 
mood,  it  is  never  weary  of  girding  at  theo- 
logical education.  We  are  reminded  that 
the    Prophets   did    not   go    to    college — 

Jonah    is   sometimes   put   forward   as    an 

105 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

instance  of  a  rapid  and  remarkable  train- 
ing,— and  the  suggestion  is  that  any  tinc- 
ture of  learning  will  be  simply  a  rebate 
from  fervour; — which  is  doing  something 
less  than  justice  to  the  culture  of  Joel,  the 
oratory  of  the  first  Isaiah,  the  poetry  of 
the  second,  the  pathetic  art  of  Jeremiah, 
or  the  amazing  originality  of  the  author 
of  the  book  of  Jonah.  The  Apostles  are 
even  used  as  an  argument  against  a  trained 
ministry,  and  uneducated  men  are  held  up 
as  models  for  preachers,  when  Jesus  Him- 
self did  not  think  that  these  chosen  men 
were  fit  for  their  work  until  they  had  been 
three  years  under  His  constant  care. 
Cannot  any  one  see  that  St.  John  was 
a  man  of  solitary  genius,  for  whom  there 
need  be  no  rules  ?  Can  any  one  state  in 
terms  of  University  curriculum  the  value 
of  those  three  years  with  Jesus  ?  And  at 
regular  intervals  some  orator  with  an  eye 
upon  the  groundlings  makes  the  hack- 
neyed contrast  between  learned  men  with- 

io6 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

out  grace  and  unlearned  men  with  grace — 
as  if  learning  and  grace  were  exclusive 
circles,  and  we  were  not  all  perfectly  certain 
that  there  would  not  be  a  congregation  left 
in  the  land  within  five  years  without  the 
patient,  unboasting  labour  of  a  trained  and 
settled  ministry. 

[Our  attitude  to  self-appointed  religious 
speakers,  and  that  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion to  quacks,  is  a  striking  contrast.  We, 
as  a  rule,  welcome  this  assistance,  in  the 
public  interest,  and  doctors  will  have  none 
of  it,  also  in  the  public  interest.  Both 
professions  are  quite  unselfish.  Which  is 
in  the  long-run  right  ?] 

It  is  indeed  a  curious  paradox  that  the 
left  should  sneer  at  theology  because  it  is 
not  worth  understanding,  and  the  right 
should  condemn  theology  because  it  is 
past  understanding,  and  so  our  unfortu- 
nate science  be  buffeted  first  on  the  one 
cheek  and  then  on  the  other.  But  theo- 
logians may  console  themselves  with  the 
107 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

reflection  that  all  this  railing  and  girding 
at  doctrine  is  simply  one  of  the  innumer- 
able forms  of  modern  cant,  and  that  the- 
ology is  an  absolute  intellectual  necessity. 
Whenever  any  student  has  collected  a 
number  of  facts  in  his  own  department, 
whether  his  science  be  physical  or  meta- 
physical, he  will  be  compelled  by  the  laws 
of  his  mind  to  arrange  his  facts  and  dis- 
cover their  principle.  Theology  has  ex- 
actly the  same  reason  to  exist  as  physics 
or  psychology,  with  the  additional  advan- 
tage of  an  intense  human  interest.  What 
is  the  genesis  of  a  doctrine  ?  Any  doc- 
trine of  the  first  order  is  the  answer  to  an 
imperative  demand  of  reason ;  it  is  the 
best  attainable  explanation  of  a  spiritual 
fact,  historical  or  experimental.  Why  not 
rest  in  the  fact  without  formulating  any- 
thing ?  Because  we  are  reasonable  beings, 
and  desire  to  give  reason  full  play  in  the 
higher  reaches  of  knowledge.  Whenever 
the  mind    is   awake,    one   asks  questions 

io8 


THE   THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

concerning  the  why  and  the  how  of  this 
fact.  One  examines  the  circumstances, 
and  collects  evidence,  and  sums  up  the 
results,  and  states  the  conclusion  in  a 
formula.  Your  formula  is  theology,  and 
'is  the  homage  reason  does  to  truth. 

No  one  can  hope  to  teach  religion,  in 
even  its  simplest  form,  with  permanent 
success,  without  a  competent  knowledge 
of  theology,  any  more  than  a  physician 
can  practise  medicine  without  a  knowl- 
edge of  physiology,  or  an  engineer  build  a 
bridge  who  has  not  learned  mathematics. 
Without  a  system  in  the  background  of 
his  mind,  a  preacher's  ideas  will  have  no 
intellectual  connection  or  artistic  propor- 
tion. Without  a  system  underlying  his 
sermons  he  cannot  grip  and  impress  his 
hearers.  His  own  creed,  instead  of  being 
a  microcosm,  will  be  a  chaos,  and  his 
sermons  between  January  and  December 
will  not  be  a  picture  growing  to  perfection 

of   perspective    and    form,  but  a  kaleido- 

109 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

scope  of  whirling  and  amazing  colours. 
This  type  of  preacher  may  have  an  audi- 
ence enthusiastic  and  admiring,  but  he 
has  no  pupils  on  whom  he  stamps  the 
lines  of  truth.  You  cannot  trace  him 
in  the  children  of  his  teaching,  because 
the  likeness  is  so  variable,  just  as  the  fash- 
ion of  his  own  countenance  was  never  two 
weeks  the  same.  To-day  he  contradicts 
what  he  said  yesterday  : — but  he  is  not  in- 
consistent, he  is  only  incoherent.  Hav- 
ing no  compass  of  thought  he  is  carried 
away  by  fancies  and  speculations  in  all 
directions,  making  many  stormy  voyages, 
and  sometimes,  without  doubt,  coming 
home  with  good  merchandise. 

[One  must  distinguish  between  the 
teacher  who  affirms  and  denies  the  same 
thing,  like  an  equation  where  the  plus  and 
minus  signs  are  equal,  and  the  result  is 
x=io,   and  a   teacher   who   gives  in  turn 

opposite    poles   of   the    same    truth,    and 

no 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

whose  world  of  thought  is  rounded  and 
solid.] 

From  the  unsystematic  thinker  people 
may  get  inspiration — which  is  a  great 
gain  ;  they  cannot  hope  for  exposition. 
Of  course  a  system  in  its  bare  outlines  is 
unsightly  and  repulsive,  and  people  have 
complained,  with  fair  reason,  of  the  dry 
bones  of  doctrine.  An  uncovered  skele- 
ton is  certainly  a  very  unlovely  object, 
and  defies  the  art  of  speech,  but  it  lies 
behind  the  rounded  grace  of  Venus  de 
Medici,  and  alone  sustains  the  weight  of 
language.  How  far  the  closely  knit  and 
symmetrical  form  ought  to  appear  through 
the  flesh  and  blood  may  be  matter  of 
taste,  there  being,  so  to  say,  masculine 
and  feminine  contours  of  thought,  but 
luxuriance  and  winsomeness  must  rest 
on  strength.  When  people  congratulate 
themselves    because    a    sermon    has   been 

clear,  it  really  means  that  it  has  been  the- 
iii 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

ological ;  and  this  may  be  true,  although 
there  be  not  one  word  of  theology  in  it 
from  beginning  to  end.  The  vine  hid 
the  trelHs-work. 

Theology  has  had  wild  speculations  and 
many  eccentricities,  like  every  other  sci- 
ence, but  her  master  efforts,  by  which  she 
must  be  judged,  are  strenuous  attempts  of 
reason  to  grasp  the  principles  which  are 
behind  the  phenomena  of  religion.  It  is 
open  to  urge  that  doctrines  have  grown 
antiquated  and  need  to  be  recast :  it  is  ab- 
surd to  deny  the  necessity  or  utility  of 
theology,  as  it  is  most  unfair  to  ignore  or 
disparage  the  remarkable  ability  w^hich  has 
gone  to  the  creation  of  this  science,  and 
which  was,  in  the  catastrophe  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  the  salvation  of  letters. 
They  are  unworthy  of  their  profession 
who  join  in  the  Philistine  outcry  against 
theology,  and  allow  it  to  be  spoken  of  as 
something  not  worthy  of  serious  study. 
If  it  be  praiseworthy  to    classify    beetles, 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

and  specialists  among  the  coleoptera  speak 
solemnly  of  their  subject,  it  may  be 
allowed  for  one  science  to  reason  regard- 
ing God  and  the  soul.  One  can  hardly 
imagine  a  greater  sin  against  light  within 
the  Church  than  any  indifference  or 
enmity  towards  theology,  or  a  more  fla- 
grant outrage  against  the  idea  of  a  Univer- 
sity than  the  omission  or  exclusion  of  one 
science  alone,  and  that  the  queen  of  all, 
and  the  one  in  which  all  others  cohere  and 
are  crowned. 

We  are  all  apt,  as  preachers,  to  be  brow- 
beaten and  reduced  to  silence  by  the  im- 
pudent assertion  that  an  average  audience 
has  no  interest  in  theology,  and  will  only 
listen  to  us  upon  the  astounding  condition 
that  we  do  not  give  them  the  one  thing 
we  are  supposed  to  have  thoroughly 
learned.  They  expect  from  a  historian 
history,  from  a  geologist  geology,  but  from 
a  teacher   of   theology — and   we    are    the 

only  teachers  of  theology  for  the  public — 
113 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

anything,  however  remote  from  the  sub- 
ject, provided  it  be  neither  very  sohd  nor 
thoughtful.  May  I  suggest  that  the  dumb 
public  is  often  libelled  by  blatant  spokes- 
men, and  means  to  say  something  different. 
Examine  the  literature  which  finds  favour 
with  the  people,  and  it  would  not  occur  to 
you  that  the  people  dislike  theology. 
Within  the  last  few  years,  for  instance, 
four  works  of  fiction  have  excited  great 
attention,  and  been  read  on  every  hand. 
One  is  John  Inglesant^  which  contains  a 
better  account  of  Quietism  than  you  will 
find  anywhere  outside  Alfred  Vaughan's 
Mystics.  The  second  is  the  Story  of  a7i 
African  Farm,  throwing  a  strange  light 
on  the  wooden  and  unlovely  theology  of 
the  Dutch  Boers.  The  third  is  John 
Ward,  Preacher,  which  is  a  powerful  in- 
dictment of  an  extreme  type  of  Calvinism 
which  has  in  the  past  often  paralysed  the 
life  and  energy  of  the  Presbyterian  com- 
munion. The  fourth  is  that  remarkable 
114 


THE    THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

and  over-estimated  book,  Robert  Elsmere, 
and  every  one  knows  that  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward  has  been  simply  discussing, 
under  the  guise  of  fiction,  the  problem  of 
historical  Christianity,  which  is  weighing 
heavily  on  many  minds  to-day.  This 
school  of  fiction  is  a  phenomenon,  and,  so 
far  as  one  knows,  is  a  new  thing  in  letters. 
It  is  impossible  to  mistake  its  significance 
or  to  deny  the  desire  it  meets  in  the  pub- 
lic mind.  One  may  have  his  own  opinion 
about  the  merits  of  the  books.  One  may 
be  doubtful  about  their  taste.  One  may 
also  view  with  apprehension  the  habit  of 
popularising  theology  to  the  point  of  vul- 
garity, and  wince  when  the  resurrection  of 
our  Lord  is  discussed  in  drawing-rooms, 
and  the  miraculous  decided  between  the 
soup  and  the  fish.  This  is  from  the 
cloister  to  the  market-place  with  a  venge- 
ance, and  thoughtful  people  must  have 
anxieties.  Both  Agnostics  and  Christians 
may    desiderate   the    former   reserve,  and 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

neither  would  like  to  have  the  veil  ut- 
terly torn  from  the  Holy  of  Holies  in  the 
soul.  One  may  also  be  haunted  by  the  con- 
viction that  the  combination  of  fiction  and 
theology  may  result  in  the  decay  of  an  art 
and  the  travesty  of  a  science.  But  the 
trend  of  the  graver  intelligence  among 
the  pubHc  is  evident,  and  it  is  distinctly 
towards  those  great  questions  which  form 
the  substance  of  the  Christian  faith,  and 
lie  at  the  foundation  of  religion.  People 
will  lie  becalmed  in  morals,  and  even  in 
physical  science,  weary  unto  death,  but  if 
any  one  dares  to  deal  with  questions  of 
faith  after  an  understanding  fashion,  he 
has  the  wind  with  him. 

But  my  evidence  on  this  point  is  not  con- 
fined to  a  few  phenomenal  novels,  which 
are  now  giving  place  to  other  works  of 
pseudo  fiction  on  the  second  burning  ques- 
tion of  the  race — for  there  are  only  two — 
Love  and  Religion.  Four  books  have 
lately  appealed  more  or  less  powerfully  to 

ii6 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

the  more  serious  public  intelligence,  and 
each  has  had  a  collateral  connection  with 
the  problems  of  theology.  One  is  Mr. 
Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief ;  another 
Mr.  Pearson's  Natio7ial  Life  a?id  Charac- 
ter, the  prophecy  of  pessimism  ;  the  third, 
Mr.  Kidd's  Social  Evohttion,  which  is  the 
first  recognition,  on  scientific  grounds,  of 
religion  as  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
society  ;  and  Professor  Drummond's  Ascent 
of  Man,  an  attempt  to  evangelise  Evolu- 
tion. No  leading  review  is  considered 
complete  without  an  unvarnished  theo- 
logical article,  and  its  editor  is  happy  if  he 
can  organise  a  controversy  on  the  future 
state  or  a  miracle  of  Jesus,  enlisting  as 
delighted  contributors  all  kinds  of  people, 
from  retired  scientists  to  Ministers  of  the 
Crown.  Draper's  History  of  the  Conflict 
between  Religion  and  Science  has  gone 
through  more  editions  than  any  other 
book  of  the   International  Science  Series, 

and  it  would  be  interesting  to  know  how 
117 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

Lux  Mundi  compares  m  sale  with  any 
book  on  politics  of  the  last  ten  years.  If 
the  pulpit  be  afraid  of  theology,  the  editors 
are  not,  and  they  are  an  infallible  barome- 
ter of  popular  taste.  The  air  is  as  theo- 
logical to-day  as  in  those  early  centuries 
when  men  settled  the  niceties  of  the  Nicene 
Creed  with  their  fists,  and  the  religious 
world  was  divided  into  two  camps  by  a 
diphthong. 

Any  one  desiring  to  preach  theology  has 
an  audience  as  large  as  that  which  waits 
on  the  physicists,  but  he  can  only  hold  it 
by  fulfilling  two  conditions.  The  first  is 
very  reasonable — it  is  that  he  has  mastered, 
or  has  at  least  a  competent  knowledge  of, 
his  science.  Preachers  have  not  always  this 
qualification,  and  intelligent  hearers  have 
discovered  that  their  teacJ:ifrs  knew  little 
more 'than  themselves,  and  only  led  in 
dogmatism  and  declamation.  We  must 
recognise  the  fact  that  intellectual  culture 
is  being  more  widely  diffused  every  year, 

ii8 


THE   THEORY   OF  RELIGION 

and  that  a  considerable  proportion  of  the 
younger  generation  read  theology.  They 
are  curious  about  the  latest  theory  on  the 
Song  of  Solomon ;  they  are  perfectly  ac- 
quainted with  the  dual  authorship  of 
Isaiah ;  they  have  their  doubts  regarding 
the  authenticity  of  Second  Peter  ;  they 
have  tried  to  trace  the  documents  of  the 
Hexateuch.  It  may  be  a  clerk  in  a  town 
who  has  access  to  a  library,  or  a  school- 
master in  some  college  who  has  spent 
his  spare  cash  in  books.  One  must  not 
presume  on  the  ignorance  of  the  most 
rustic  people  ;  there  may  be  one  reader 
in  the  little  church,  and  there  will  be  six 
soon.  Others  may  wish  to  go  into  the 
question  of  orders,  or  the  doctrine  of  the 
Sacraments,  or  the  history  of  creeds,  or  the 
theory  of  the  'higher  life.'  It  is  the 
Renaissance  of  theology,  with  all  the  hope- 
fulness and  restlessness  of  a  new  move- 
ment.    These  amateur  students  will  turn 

to  us,  and  they  have  a  right  to  expect  our 

119 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

help.  If  it  appears  that  after  a  careful 
training,  and  with  a  life  consecrated  to 
such  study,  we  know  less  than  the  inquirers, 
they  will  not  trouble  us  farther,  but  we 
shall  be  despised  like  a  doctor  who  needs 
to  be  taught  by  his  own  patient.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  are  so  far  left  to  ourselves 
as  to  frown  on  such  study  and  label  it 
dangerous,  then  we  shall  be  suspected  of 
dishonesty.  We  must  accept  the  age  into 
which  Providence  has  cast  us,  and  enter 
into  its  spirit.  One  can  hardly  imagine 
any  more  honourable  task  than  to  meet  its 
wants  and  to  guide  its  inquiries.  There 
are  ages  which  have  been  saved  from  sin 
by  evangelism ;  this  is  an  age  which  must 
be  saved  from  scepticism  by  knowledge. 

One  of  course  remembers  the  enormous 
extent  of  theology,  and  I  am  not  suggest- 
ing that  each  minister  be  an  original 
worker.  The  day  was  when  one  man 
would  write  a  commentary  on  the  whole 
Bible  and   all  subjects   therein,  from  its 

120 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

prophecies  to  its  geography,  but  this  were 
now  a  labour  of  Hercules.  Theology, 
like  every  other  science,  has  been  divided 
into  departments,  and  each  has  its  own 
specialist.  One  takes  Old  Testament  His- 
tory, another  Prophecy,  a  third  the  Gos- 
pels, a  fourth  the  Epistles.  There  is 
dogma,  exegesis,  Church  history,  ethics, 
palaeography.  To-morrow  there  may  be 
farther  subdivision,  until  each  book  in  the 
Bible,  and  each  period  in  the  history  of 
the  Church,  and  each  doctrine  of  the  faith 
has  its  master.  We  must  accept  the  dis- 
tinction between  a  professed  scholar  and  a 
working  minister,  as  we  do  between  a  con- 
sulting physician  and  a  general  practitioner. 
We  are  the  general  practitioners,  who  owe 
a  debt  of  gratitude  to  the  experts,  and  can 
best  discharge  it  by  using  their  work. 
Our  sphere  is  that  of  theological  middle- 
men, who  will  distribute  among  the  public 
the  selected  and  assorted  produce  of  the 
schools.     We  must  not  only  overtake  the 


THE  CURE  OF  SOULS 

past,  but  also  keep  abreast  of  the  present, 
using  every  spare  moment  to  read  and 
digest  the  latest  and  best  theology,  that 
our  people  may  have  the  full  benefit  of 
that  great  revival  of  thought  which  is 
making  the  Bible  to  blossom  like  the 
rose. 

It  would  be  a  happy  enterprise  for  the 
Church  to  supplement  the  efforts  of  her 
working  clergy  by  sending  experts  to  lec- 
ture in  the  larger  towns  and,  so  far  as  pos- 
sible, in  country  centres,  on  the  chief 
themes  of  theology.  This  expedient 
would  confer  a  double  benefit,  for  it  would 
rear  a  race  of  believing  scholars  and  would 
convey  the  latest  results  of  theological 
science  to  our  people,  untainted  by  that 
spirit  of  speculation  which  revels  in  base- 
less theories,  and  that  insidious  unbelief 
which  quietly  eliminates  the  supernatural. 
One  would  also  like  to  see  a  series  of 
theological  handbooks,  written  by  compe- 
tent men  and  in  a  vigorous  style,  so  that 


THE   THEORY   OF   RELIGION 

any  man,  learned  or  simple,  in  our  land 
could  secure  as  reliable  and  interesting  in- 
formation on  theology  as  on  physics  or 
physiology.  If  men  are  now  awaking  to 
the  claims  of  the  queen  of  sciences,  the 
credit  can  hardly  be  given  to  the  Church, 
but  if  her  children  have  to  go  to  unbeliev- 
ing scholars  for  satisfaction,  the  sin  of 
such  a  disaster  will  lie  at  the  Church's 
door. 

The  second  condition  of  success  is  that 
we  place  our  science  before  a  cultured 
generation  in  a  becoming  dress.  It  is  a 
shame  when  theology  is  more  poorly 
clothed  than  comparative  anatomy  or 
political  economy,  and  her  savants  cannot 
be  acquitted  of  carelessness.  They  have 
been  so  anxious  to  secure  light  that  they 
have  been  indifferent  to  sweetness.  Any- 
thing more  barbarous  than  the  jargon  of 
the  Puritan  theologians,  with  a  few  excep- 
tions, can  hardly  be  imagined.     Owen  is 

their  most  representative  divine,  and  the 
123 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

most  tedious  and  uncouth  writer  upon 
one's  shelf.  Yet  the  Puritans  lived  at  the 
close  of  the  Augustan  period  of  English 
letters,  when  Shakespeare  was  just  dead 
and  Milton  was  writing  Paradise  Lost. 
It  is  one  of  the  reproaches  of  Puritan 
thought,  both  former  and  latter,  that 
while  it  has  added  enormously  to  the- 
ology, it  has  contributed  only  one  book. 
The  Pilgrims  Progress,  and  possibly 
Howe's  Living  Temple,  to  literature.  The 
explanation  certainly  does  not  lie  in  any 
necessary  divorce  between  culture  and  the- 
ology. Erasmus,  the  pioneer  of  modern 
theology,  and  that  beautiful  spirit.  Sir 
Thomas  More,  both  lovers  of  learning 
and  children  of  faith,  attempted  an  eireni- 
con. But  almost  immediately  the  the- 
ologians and  the  Humanists  parted  com- 
pany, and  since  then  the  theologians,  with 
some  fine  exceptions,  have  contemned 
letters,  and  the  Humanists  have  had  their 

merry  jest  at  theology.     But  that  is  no 
124 


THE   THEORY    OF   RELIGION 

reason  why  words  should  not  wait  on  the 
theologian  like  nimble  servitors  as  readily 
as  on  the  poet.  He  cannot  indeed  be  a 
theologian  unless  he  be  also,  in  spirit,  a 
poet ;  for  poetry  and  Christianity  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being  in  the  same 
region.  Theology,  after  all,  has  had  her 
stylists,  and  it  is  a  liberal  education  to 
read  her  masters.  The  majesty  of  Hook- 
er, the  brilliance  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  the 
sweetness  of  Leighton,  the  purity  of 
Newman,  the  incisive  vigour  of  South, 
the  aptness  of  Bushnell,  and  the  force  of 
that  untrained  theologian  John  Bunyan, 
are  a  delight  and  a  model.  Theology 
which  has  not  been  in  the  main  current  of 
letters  is  invariably  stranded  in  some 
creek  and  forgotten  ;  the  men  who  added 
culture  to  science  live  and  flourish. 
[Samuel  Rutherford  and  Archbishop 
Leighton  were  of  the  same  period — both 
fine  scholars  and  finer  saints.  Ruther- 
ford's theology  is  unread,  while  Leighton's 
125 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

S^.  Peter  is  on  every  theologian's  shelf,  be- 
cause the  one  is  literature  and  the  other  is 
not]  People  will  decline  to  taste  the- 
ology barbarously  served  when  Professor 
Huxley  has  been  making  natural  science 
as  fascinating  as  a  romance.  Letters  take 
a  swift  revenge  on  the  arrogant  theologian 
by  denying  him  their  aid  in  his  hour  of 
need,  and  teaching  him  the  useful  lesson 
that  there  must  be  no  separation  between 
culture  and  religion. 

It  remains  for  each  minister  to  decide 
how  far  he  will  give  distinct  instruction  in 
theology  to  his  people,  but  he  has  no 
alternative  about  leavening  his  preaching 
with  theology.  Just  as  the  great  masters 
in  art  used  to  paint  the  nude  figure  com- 
plete in  every  line  and  muscle  before  they 
draped  it  with  garments  for  some  Christ, 
so  must  the  most  accurate  theology  under- 
lie every  sermon,  to  secure  it  with  intellect- 
ual consistency  and  to  invest  it  with  spirit- 
126 


THE   THEORY    OF    RELIGION 

ual  force.  But  when  one  has  said  his  last 
word  for  the  study  of  theology,  there  still 
remains  for  the  Christian  teacher  another 
qualification,  without  which  his  theology 
will  be  vain,  and,  indeed,  he  cannot  be  a 
theologian.  Between  our  science  and 
every  other  there  is  this  difference,  that  in 
other  departments  of  knowledge  one  must 
know  to  love,  in  Christian  theology  one 
must  love  to  know.  In  vain  will  be  every 
place  of  learning,  however  thoroughly 
equipped,  and  any  masters,  how^ever  schol- 
arly ;  in  vain  will  be  all  books  and  study, 
if  the  soul  have  no  spiritual  vision.  'What 
availeth  it  to  know  the  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Trinity,'  says  an  ancient  Father,  '  if 
we  have  not  humility?'  He  can  under- 
stand truth  whose  mind  has  been  illu- 
minated by  the  Spirit  of  God  and  his  heart 
cleansed  by  the  Cross  of  Christ.  It  is 
good  to  use  all  the  means  of  learning  with 

dihgence,    but  best    to    live  in   fellowship 
127 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

with  Jesus,  for  he  only  who  comes  forth 
from  the  secret  place  of  God  will  carry 
with  him  the  Living  Word  and  the  Divine 
Unction. 


128 


THE   NEW    DOGMA 


CHAPTER  V 


THE    NEW    DOGMA 


Every  student  of  Church  history  is  aware 
that  theological  science  has  not  developed 
along  a  straight  line,  but  in  a  course  of 
progressive  and  sometimes  intersecting 
circles.  Those  circles  differ  in  character, 
some  completing  themselves  in  a  shorter 
period  than  others,  or  embracing  a  smaller 
province  of  the  Church  ;  but,  as  a  rule, 
each  has  four  segments,  and  by  taking  an 
observation  one  can  tell  where  his  age  is 
in  this  evolution  of  thought. 

There  is  the  pre-doctrinal  period,  when 
truth  is  held  in  solution  and  has  not  yet 
crystallised.  The  Church  has  no  doctrine 
regarding  the  Person  of  Christ,  or  His 
Sacrifice,  or  the  Holy  Trinity,  or   the  his- 


131 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

tory  of  man.  The  Christian  simply  be- 
Heves  in  Christ,  and  lives  with  Him,  and 
learns  from  Him,  and  follows  Him  unto 
death,  because  Christ  has  loosed  the  power 
of  his  sin,  or  comforted  his  sore  heart, 
or  fulfilled  his  spiritual  aspirations,  or  cast 
light  on  the  darkness  of  the  grave.  The 
Church  is  not  yet  self-conscious,  nor  has 
she  realised  her  faith.  Her  position  is, 
with  St.  Peter,  '  Lord,  unto  Whom  can 
we  go  but  unto  Thee?  Thou  hast  the 
words  of  everlasting  life.'  This  is  the  age 
of  Mysticism. 

Then  comes  the  doctrinal  period,  when 
the  truth  is  precipitated  and  takes  its  first 
visible  form.  Under  the  pressure  of 
speculation,  or  on  the  attack  of  unbe- 
lief, the  Church  pauses  in  the  current 
of  her  emotions  and  inquires  what  she 
believes. 

[Whom  she  believes,  she  knows,  and 
Him  through  every  change  of  creed  she 

ever  believes,  returning  from  her  furthest 

132 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

journeys  of  theological  science  to  His 
side.] 

There  is  ample  liberty  of  discussion, 
since  there  are  no  precedents  for  refer- 
ence, no  standards  of  authority.  The 
traveller  has  no  map  of  guidance,  for  the 
land  has  never  been  surveyed,  although 
people  have  lived  and  rejoiced  m  its 
fatness.  Slowly  and  painfully,  with  fierce 
intellectual  tumult,  and  often  with  dis- 
graceful commotions,  the  Church  discovers 
her  mind. 

[One  may  never  know  what  is  in  his 
mind  till  some  one  expresses  it  for  him, 
hence  our  gratitude  to  a  poet  who  makes 
us  articulate.] 

Consider  how  the  most  elaborate  and 
complete  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Faith, 
the  doctrine  of  our  Lord's  Person,  was 
evolved  from  the  consciousness  of  the 
Church.  An  acute  and  pious  scholar 
denied    the     Deity    of    Christ,    and    the 

Church    received    a    shock    of    surprise. 

133 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

After  keen  discussion  the  Church,  in 
Council  assembled,  declared  that  Christ 
was  very  God.  But  the  question  of  our 
Lord's  Person  had  now  been  made  matter 
of  debate,  and  reason  must  work  it  out  to 
the  end.  Another  ecclesiastic,  as  might 
be  expected,  now  denied  Christ's  human- 
ity, and  the  Church  affirmed  that  He  was 
true  Man  as  well  as  true  God.  It  almost 
followed,  as  reason  sounded  her  way 
through  this  sublime  mystery,  that  some 
one  would  in  that  case  assert  that  Jesus 
must  be  two  persons,  and  after  delibera- 
tion the  Church  asserted  the  one  person 
of  Jesus.  So  it  came  to  pass  that  a  fourth 
theologian  assumed  one  nature  in  Jesus, 
and  once  more  the  Church  gathered  and 
laid  down  the  two  natures  of  the  Lord. 
After  this  fashion  was  the  doctrine  of 
Christ's  person  wrought  out  by  valid  and 
repeated  processes  of  reason — an  inevita- 
ble and  orderly  evolution — and  the  work 

of  the   four  Councils    remains  unto   this 
134 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

day.  Instead  of  the  individual  Christian 
saying,  *I  helieve,'  the  Church  meets  and 
repeats  the  Nicene  Creed.  This  is  the 
age  of  Dogmatism. 

Next  follows  the  post-doctrinal  period, 
which  is  not  capable  of  exciting  human 
interest,  and  is  afflicted  with  an  insuf- 
ferable weariness.  The  doctrine  which 
flowed  molten  from  hearts  fired  with 
divine  love  has  now  run  down  into  a 
mould  and  settled  into  a  cast-iron  shape. 
During  this  period  scholars  give  them- 
selves to  the  application  of  the  doctrine 
in  directions  which  were  never  intended 
by  its  author,  and  to  the  battle  of  details, 
most  of  which  are  of  quite  minor  impor- 
tance. The  doctrine  ceases  to  be  a  living 
reality,  and  becomes  a  mere  intellectual 
proposition,  which,  if  a  man  hold,  he  shall 
be  saved,  even  though  he  be  an  open 
sinner  ;  which,  if  he  deny,  he  shall  be 
damned,    even    though    he    be    a  radiant 

saint.     This  is  the  age  of  Scholasticism. 
135 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

[It  is  good  to  remember  that,  however 
cold  and  detached  from  life  any  doctrine 
may  seem  to  us  in  our  day,  it  must  once 
have  expressed  the  profound  conviction 
of  believing  Christians,  and  that  the 
kernel  contained  in  its  husk  is  eternal. 
There  is  no  doctrine  of  the  first  order 
which  does  not  enshrine  a  living  idea  of 
religion.] 

Lastly  comes  a  time  when  earnest  men, 
growing  weary,  not  of  the  principles,  but 
of  their  forms,  propose  to  make  a  clean 
sweep  of  dogma.  They  raze  the  building 
to  the  ground,  and  then  proceed  to  closely 
examme  the  foundations.  The  Church 
goes  back  again  to  the  elementary  facts  of 
revelation  and  experience,  to  test  their 
authenticity  and  reality,  and  to  see  what 
use  can  be  made  of  them  for  the  good  of 
the  individual  soul  and  the  common  spir- 
itual life.  This  spirit  is  not  of  necessity 
arbitrary  or  disloyal ;  it  may  be  most  pious 

and  humble.     Nor  need  it  be  iconoclastic  : 

136 


THE    NEW    DOGMA 

doctrine  may  be  tried  only  to  be  approved. 
This  is  the  age  of   Criticism. 

There  is  first  the  age  of  St.  John,  then 
the  age  of  Athanasius,  then  the  age  of  the 
schoolmen,  then  comes  the  age  of  Eras- 
mus. After  which  another  circle  com- 
mences. 

[Each  period  is  to  be  found  incarnate 
in  contemporaneous  Christians,  and  any 
large  congregation  can  afford  a  mystic,  a 
dogmatist,  a  schoolman,  and  a  critic.  Be- 
tween one  whose  dogma  is  a  living  part 
of  his  soul,  and  another  who  carries  his 
dogma  like  a  pocket-game  he  can  show  on 
occasion,  there  is  an  enormous  difference. 
If  you  attack  the  former,  you  wound  him ; 
if  you  attack  the  latter,  he  gets  angry. 
One  ought  never  to  despair  of  a  critic  and 
count  him  hopelessly  cold  ;  he  is  conscious 
himself  that  he  is  in  the  arctic  zone,  and 
may  set  off  for  the  tropics  any  day.  When 
a    critic    changes    he    always    becomes   a 

mystic] 

137 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

It  is  not  difficult  to  identify  the  age  of  our 
fathers,  whose  teachers  we  remember  with 
veneration,  but  whose  teaching  is  respon- 
sible for  a  revulsion  in  their  children, 
which  has  often  gone  to  dangerous  and 
foolish  extremes.  They  did  not  create 
dogma,  throwing  no  new  light  on  the 
supreme  subjects  of  our  creed  ;  they  were 
not  critics,  adding  nothing  to  the  sources 
of  dogma.  They  received  what  had  been 
created,  and  defended  the  deposit  rigidly 
to  its  jots  and  tittles.  They  pursued  doc- 
trines into  all  their  recesses  and  mmutiae, 
and  cast  saints  out  of  the  Church  for  dif- 
fering from  them  on  some  sub-theory  of  a 
doctrine.  Great  and  fruitful  conceptions, 
like  the  Holy  Trmity  and  the  Incarnation, 
were  isolated  from  life,  and  their  ethical 
context  never  even  suspected ;  and  one 
recalls  with  a  shudder  how  the  one  was 
treated  like  a  problem  of  Euclid,  and  the 
other  as  a  clever  expedient.     The  idea  of 

Inspiration  was  reduced   to  a  mechanical 

138 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

theory,  which  made  the  divine  origin  of 
the  Bible  incredible,  and  the  Church,  in 
dearth  of  any  great  intellectual  interest, 
gave  herself  to  futile  discussions  regarding 
the  lawfulness  of  hymns  and  organs  in 
public  worship.  The  night  is  darkest  just 
before  the  dawn,  and  one  knows  when 
such  things  come  to  pass  that  scholasti- 
cism has  reached  its  height  in  any  Church, 
and  that  the  day  of  criticism  is  at  hand. 

When  in  certain  quarters  of  the  Church 
intelligent  Christians  were  in  keen  debate 
as  to  whether  Christ  died  for  all  men  or 
only  for  some,  and  whether  He  suffered 
our  exact  punishment  or  its  equivalent, 
the  spirit  of  criticism,  which  in  Germany 
had  long  been  dealing  with  classical  litera- 
ture, began  to  work  on  Holy  Scripture. 
It  was  some  time  before  the  English- 
speaking  Churches  felt  the  effects  of  this 
new  movement,  but  it  is  worth  recalling 
that  in  1841  Frederic  Myers,  the  curate  of 

St.  John's   Church,  Keswick,  published  a 

139 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

volume  entitled  Catholic  Thoughts  on  the 
Bible  and  Theology,  in  which  he  stated,  in 
a  very  lucid  and  persuasive  manner,  the 
modern  idea  of  the  form  of  the  Bible,  and 
which  is  a  veritable  seed-plot  of  reasonable 
thought.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century  at 
least,  the  intellectual  resources  of  the 
Church  have  been  withdrawn  from  the 
study  of  dogma  (with,  of  course,  some 
brilliant  exceptions)  and  devoted  to  criti- 
cism, with  the  grateful  result  of  adding  a 
new  and  opulent  district  to  theology, 
whose  waters,  fresh  and  overflowing,  have 
irrigated  and  revived  neighbouring  prov- 
inces. 

The  ministers  of  to-day  have  been 
trained  in  this  age  and  baptized  into  its 
spirit.  We  have  shared  the  hopes  and 
endeavours,  we  have  felt  the  doubts  and 
anxieties  of  our  time,  and  we  can  now 
frankly  tell  our  people  its  faults  and  fruits. 

Criticism  has  offended  the   Church  by 

its  pretentiousiiess,  for  its  preachers  were 

140 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

apt  to  speak  as  if  they  had  a  new  Gospel. 
Of  course  they  had  nothing,  and  could 
have  nothing,  of  the  kind.  They  have 
given  a  large  amount  of  information  and 
they  have  removed  some  traditions,  but  a 
message  for  the  soul  criticism  can  never 
offer.  The  Gospel  is  a  certain  voice  of 
God,  which  sounds  from  the  first  book  of 
the  Bible  to  the  last,  and  any  science 
which  handles  the  body  of  the  books  does 
not  come  near  the  soul.  The  critic  has 
established  a  debt  of  gratitude  at  the 
hands  of  the  Church,  but  when  he  con- 
founds himself  with  the  evangelist  he  has 
forgotten  his  place. 

Criticism  has  also  sinned  through  ttn- 
charitableness ;  for  some  of  the  pioneers 
of  the  new  school  have  forgotten  good 
manners,  and  have  not  carried  themselves 
respectfully  to  the  past.  While  a  dis- 
coverer in  physics  is  ever  grateful  for  the 
work  done  by  his  predecessors,  and  corrects 
their  mistakes  w^ith  humility,  recognising 

I4T 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

that  he  stands  on  their  shoulders,  and  that 
his  results  will  also  one  day  be  revised,  the 
biblical  critic  has  been  inclined  to  treat 
the  old  scholarship  with  unconcealed  con- 
tempt, and  to  expose  its  errors  with  ma- 
lignant satisfaction.  Criticism  has  been 
misunderstood  and  slandered,  it  has  been 
persecuted  and  martyred,  and  in  this  treat- 
ment of  her  honest  and  faithful  servants 
the  Church  has  sinned  ;  but  in  her  justifica- 
tion it  may  be  freely  urged  that  criticism 
has  often  had  little  regard  for  the  feelings 
and  beliefs  of  the  older  generation,  which 
may  have  been  obscurantist,  but  was  also 
reverent  and  saintly. 

[If  a  minister  feels  it  his  duty  to  advance 
any  new  view,  his  style  of  speech  ought 
to  be  especially  cautious  and  considerate, 
because  he  must  give  a  shock  to  many 
good  people,  and  is  in  danger  of  shaking 
the  faith  of  some.  When  a  liberal  in 
theology   is  bitter  and   intolerant,   it  is  a 

satire  on    his   position,    and  any   disaster 
142 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

which  follows  has  been  earned.  One  has 
the  strong  conviction  that  the  advocacy  of 
advanced  opinions  ought  to  be  entrusted 
to  men  of  large  build  and  robust  constitu- 
tion. People  will  take  from  a  big,  good- 
natured  man  what  would  goad  them  into 
frenzy  from  a  little  man  with  a  shrill 
voice.] 

Criticism  has,  however,  rendered  two 
great  services  to  the  working  ministry,  and 
one  is  apologetical.  Almost  all  the  moral 
attacks  upon  the  Bible,  which  may  have 
been  cheap,  but  which  were  very  embarrass- 
ing, fall  to  the  ground  as  soon  as  the 
Bible  is  seen  to  be  a  progressive  and 
gradual  revelation.  When  the  massacre  of 
the  Canaanites,  and  certain  proceedmgs  of 
David  are  flung  in  the  face  of  Christians, 
it  is  no  longer  necessary  to  fall  back  on 
evasions  or  special  pleading.  It  can  now 
be  frankly  admitted  that,  from  our  stand- 
point in  this  year  of  grace,    such    deeds 

were  atrocious  and  that  they  could  never 

143 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

be  according  to  the  mind  of  God,  but  that 
they  must  be  judged  by  their  date,  and 
considered  the  defects  of  elementary  moral 
processes.  The  Bible  is  vindicated  be- 
cause it  is,  on  the  whole,  a  steady  ascent, 
and  because  it  culminates  in  Christ. 

Criticism  has  also  handed  the  Bible  to 
the  working  minister,  re-arranged,  re-ed- 
ited, re-bound,  and  so  in  this  w^ay  made  it 
for  his  purpose  a  more  intelligible  and  in- 
teresting book.  When  a  prophet  and  his 
environment  are  adjusted,  his  speeches  are 
re-issued  with  illustrations  which  have  a 
very  practical  application  to  our  day : 
when  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  is  referred 
to  the  days  of  the  third  century  b.  c.  then 
its  note  is  caught,  and  any  man  who  has 
been  wronged  and  embittered  by  political 
tyranny  and  social  corruption  has  his  bit- 
ter cry  mcluded  in  the  Book  of  God.  The 
Bible  as  it  comes  from  the  critics  is  more 
real,    because    it    is    more  human  ;    not  a 

book  dropped    down    from    heaven,    un- 
144 


THE    NEW    DOGMA 

touched  with  a  feeHng  of  our  infirmities, 
but  a  book  wrought  out  through  the 
struggles,  hopes,  trials,  victories  of  the 
soul  of  man  in  his  quest  after  God. 

One  thing  the  minister  must  lay  to  his 
heart  and  impress  on  his  people,  and  that 
is  the  perfect  harmony  between  faith  and 
criticism.  Without  any  exception,  the  most 
reliable  and  brilliant  scholars  of  our  Eng- 
lish-speaking communions  have  been,  or 
are,  believing  and  devout  men,  who  rejoice 
to  turn  from  the  study  of  the  literature  to 
declare  the  Gospel  of  the  Bible.  It  ought 
also  to  be  pointed  out,  that  the  total  re- 
sults of  criticism,  when  they  converge  upon 
a  point,  have  been,  not  to  obscure  or 
belittle  Christ,  but  rather^  to  throw  Him 
into  supreme  relief  Whom  all  the  prophets 
anticipated,  Whom  the  apostles  declared. 
The  most  fearful  or  most  unlearned 
Christian  ought  to  be  comforted  and 
gladdened  with  the    assurance    that  after 

criticism  has  practically  finished  her  work, 
145 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

the  faith  of  the  Church  is  more  firmly 
and  reasonably  established.  It  is  the  min- 
istry who  must  explain  this  to  the  people, 
because  the  people  have  learned  to  accept 
their  word,  and  because  the  critics  have 
done  so  much  for  the  ministry. 

It  is,  however,  evident  that  the  force  of 
criticism  is  nearly  exhausted,  and  the  signs 
are  on  every  hand  that  we  have  already 
entered  on  an  age  of  mysticism.  The 
great  devotional  writers,  A'Kempis,  Tauler, 
Boehme,  Law,  and  Andrews,  have  ob- 
tained a  new  hold  on  the  religious  mind  : 
poets  like  Herbert  and  Keble  share  their 
popularity :  and  William  Blake,  the  poet- 
painter,  is  now  a  cult.  Pious  people  meet 
together  in  country  places  for  conference 
on  spiritual  things,  and  while  such  confer- 
ences were  once  the  repetition  of  Sunday 
sermons,  they  are  now  devoted  to  esoteric 
religion,  where  three  classes  are  recog- 
nised,  the   unregenerate,    the    regenerate, 

and    the    perfect,    who    have    received   a 

146 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  entered 
into  the  deeper  secrets  of  the  rehgious 
Hfe. 

[Conferences  for  the  deepening  of  the 
spiritual  life  prove  that  many  earnest 
Christians  are  dissatisfied  with  both  dogma 
and  criticism,  and  are  longing  for  the  inner 
light  and  direct  communion.  For  religion 
has  three  places  of  abode — in  the  reason, 
which  is  Theology ;  in  the  conscience, 
which  is  Ethics  ;  and  in  the  heart,  which 
is  Quietism.  One  is  bound  to  welcome 
such  gatherings  of  the  *  Friends  of  God ' 
and  wish  them  prosperity,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  one  cannot  but  feel  regret  that  the 
Church  has  not  supplied  every  want  of 
her  children  ;  and  one  is  sometimes  a  little 
disappointed  that  the  new  Quietists  are  so 
bound  by  the  letter  of  Holy  Scriptures, 
playing  with  words  in  a  way  that  cometh 
near  absurdity,  and  that  they  do  not  claim 
kindred  with  their  lineal  ancestors  both  of 

the  days  before  and  after  the  Reformation. 

147 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

OurQuietists  seem  to  be  wandering  round 
their  home,  but  some  day  they  will  find 
the  door,  and  enter  in  to  possess  their 
family  inheritance.  The  minister  ought 
to  have  a  very  tender  care  of  such 
choice  and  tender  souls  in  his  congrega- 
tion, holding  private  converse  with  them, 
and  from  time  to  time  feeding  them  with 
food  convenient  from  their  favourite 
pastures  of  the  Psalms  and  St.  John's 
Gospel.] 

The  conclusive  proof  that  we  are  al- 
ready in  the  midst  of  a  true  and  sane  mys- 
ticism is  the  instinctive  return  to  Christ, 
where  on  every  side  and  from  all  schools 
Christian  souls  are  making  for  their  place 
of  birth,  as  fish  find  again  their  native 
stream.  Many  traditions  have  been  swept 
away,  and  many  theories  laid  aside  ;  but 
above  the  dust  of  controversy  rises  the 
face  of  Christ.  Surely  there  has  been  no 
age  since  that  early  morn,  when  the  echo 

of  His  footsteps  was  still  on  earth,  and  His 

148 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

very  appearance  in  the  flesh  was  remem- 
bered, wherein  Christians  have  been  so 
anxious  to  understand  what  Jesus  was  and 
what  He  taught.  Nor  has  there  been  any 
age  since  the  days  of  the  Roman  Martyrs 
where  there  has  been  such  devotion  to 
His  person,  whether  you  gather  the  evi- 
dence from  the  Salvation  Army,  which, 
with  all  its  apparent  extravagances,  is 
touched  with  a  noble  and  simple  hero- 
ism ;  or  the  Missions,  whose  martyrs 
are  taking  possession  of  Africa  for  the 
Lord. 

When  a  minister  leads  his  people  in 
the  return  to  Christ,  it  is  well  for  him  to 
avoid  two  extremes.  He  must  neither  go 
to  the  Gospels  alone,  for  there  he  is  deal- 
ing with  an  earthly  Christ,  nor  to  the 
heavens  alone,  for  then  is  he  dealing  with  an 
unknown  Christ,  but  to  Him  Who  is  alive 
for  evermore,  and  Whom  we  have  in  the 
Gospels.     Criticism  gives  us  the  historical 

Christ,  and  mysticism  gives  us  the  spirit- 

149 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

ual  Christ,  and  both  united  give  us  the 
real  Christ. 

We  ought  to  pray  that  the  mystical 
spirit  may  long  continue  and  make  tender 
our  hearts,  but  it  is  almost  certain  that  the 
Church  will  soon  begin  the  reconstruction 
of  dogma,  and  that  men  are  living  who 
will  have  their  share  in  the  enterprise. 
Dogmatic  theologians  are  still  very  rare, 
but  the  material  is  rapidly  accumulating 
for  their  work,  and  the  Church  will  soon 
demand  that  the  results  of  the  New  Criti- 
cism and  the  new  exegesis  be  gathered 
and  stated  in  the  form  of  doctrine.  A 
few  swallows  herald  the  spring,  and  Dr. 
Fairbairn's  Clnnst  in  Modern  Theology 
and  Canon  Gore's  Incarnation  are  the  be- 
ginning of  a  time — a  time  for  which  many 
are  praying. 

If,  however,  the  Christian  Church  of 
next  century-  is  to  have  beautiful  and 
acceptable  doctrine,   then   it  can  only  be 

under  two  conditions  that  were  not  known 

150 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

in  the  past.  One  is,  that  theology  be 
allowed  the  same  liberty  as  any  other  sci- 
ence, mental  or  physical.  Why  is  it 
dogma  has  excited  so  fierce  a  dislike  that 
the  mere  suggestion  of  a  revival  of  dogma 
fills  many  intelligent  and  liberal  minds 
with  dismay  ?  It  is  not  because  they 
could  deny  to  theology  the  same  right  to 
formulate  her  conclusions  as  physics,  or 
that  they  could  close  their  eyes  to  the 
immense  progress  theology  has  made 
within  recent  years.  They  remember  that 
the  Church  was  not  content  in  the  past  to 
state  her  mind  as  to  dogma,  but  insisted 
on  making  that  dogma  final,  and  binding 
it  for  ever  on  the  faith  of  the  members, 
and  they  are  haunted  by  the  fear  that  this 
sad  tragedy  may  be  repeated.  Why 
is  it  that  the  physicist  has  no  grudge  at  his 
predecessors  and  never  girds  at  them, 
while  the  modern  theologian  is  inclined  to 
rend   his   fathers  ?     The  physicist  has  not 

been  confined  to  the   limits  of  the  fourth 
151 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

or  sixteenth  centuries,  while  the  dead 
hand  of  Councils  and  Confessions  rest  on 
the  theologian.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
every  branch  of  the  Christian  Church  will 
soon  exact  no  other  pledge  of  her  teachers 
than  a  declaration  of  faith  in  Jesus  as 
the  Son  of  God  and  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  and  a  promise  to  keep  His  com- 
mandments, and  otherwise  grant  to  them 
the  fullest  freedom  of  thought  and  expo- 
sition. 

The  other  condition  is  that  the  obvious 
distinction  between  religion  and  dogma 
be  frankly  recognised.  One  may  walk  in 
the  light  and  know  nothing  of  astronomy, 
as  did  St.  Thomas,  who  was  practically  a 
slave  of  Jesus  and  doctrinally  a  sceptic 
concerning  Christ.  One  may  have  studied 
astronomy  and  walk  in  darkness,  as  did 
the  Pharisees,  who  were  accomplished  in 
doctrine  and  sent  Jesus  to  the  Cross.  It  is 
rather  discreditable  that  a  Christian  should 

not  think  out  the  theory  of  his  faith,  and 

152 


THE    NEW    DOGMA 

he  should  be  exhorted  and  encouraged  by 
his  minister  to  take  up  theology,  but 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter  there  will  be 
sound  thinkers  who  are  poor  livers  and 
erroneous  thinkers  who  are  splendid  livers. 
Under  such  favouring  circumstances  the- 
ology will  at  last  obtain  her  opportunity, 
and  come  into  her  kingdom. 

When  this  age  begins,  we  may  hope  to 
witness  a  remarkable  revival  of  forgotten 
thought ;  and  it  will  not,  some  dare  to 
imagine,  be  so  much  a  new  theology  as  an 
old  theology,  which  came  before  its  time, 
that  will  at  last  be  acclimatised  in  Christian 
faith.  It  is  well  known  that  there  were 
two  schools  among  the  Fathers,  the 
School  of  St.  Augustine  and  the  School 
of  Clement  of  Alexandria.  The  one 
school  rested  all  theology  (speaking  in 
a  general  but  sufficiently  exact  sense)  upon 
the  conception  of  the  Eternal  which  made 
Him  a  Law  Giver  and  a  Sovereign.     The 

other  school,  that  of  Clement,  rested  the 
153 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

conception  of  the  Eternal  upon  the  idea  of 
His  Fatherhood.  Many  have  been  filled 
with  wistful  regret  that  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria had  not  his  due  effect  upon  the 
thought  of  the  Christian  Church.  But  let 
us  not  reflect  upon  the  Divine  Spirit,  nor 
come  to  rash  conclusions  on  the  develop- 
ment of  doctrine.  One  can  see  very 
clearly  that  there  is  a  relation  between  the 
moral  state  of  the  human  race  and  its  con- 
ception of  the  Deity.  There  is  a  growth 
in  the  idea  of  God  in  the  experience  of  the 
individual,  and  in  the  experience  of  the 
race ;  and  the  full  idea  of  God  comes 
slowly  to  its  height.  No  one  can  deny 
that  the  first  thing  that  has  to  be  lodged 
in  the  mind  of  the  human  race,  especially 
when  in  a  spiritually  low  and  uneducated 
condition,  is  the  idea  of  the  Divine  power 
and  of  the  Divine  holiness.  That  was 
especially  necessary  when  the  world  was 
crumbling  into  pieces  through  corruption, 

and  one  can  understand  how  the  Christian 
154 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

theology  stepped  into  the  throne  of  a  dead 
Roman  Empire  and  ruled  the  consciences 
of  men  unto  salvation,  when  one  remem- 
bers that  the  doctrine  of  Augustine  was 
bound  upon  the  moral  consciousness. 
The  doctrine  of  Clement  would  have  been 
premature  and  would  have  failed  of  ethical 
success.  But  his  evangelical  theology 
was  not  in  vain  ;  and  now  when  we  have 
got  into  our  blood  for  ever  the  conception 
of  God  which  crowns  Him  the  King,  Holy 
and  Almighty,  we  are  prepared  upon  a 
sound  moral  basis  to  receive  Him  as  the 
loving  and  merciful  Father.  One  there- 
fore anticipates  that  the  new  doctrine  will 
be  based  on  the  conception  of  the  Divine 
Fatherhood — not  the  Fatherhood  which 
throws  away  the  Judgeship  and  the  Right- 
eousness of  God,  but  the  Fatherhood  that 
gathers  these  up  into  a  nobler  and  final 
unity ;  and  that  the  Incarnation  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  as  the  revelation  of  the 

Father  and  the  Head  of  the   human  race, 

155 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

will  yield  more  blessed  and  practical 
fruit  in  the  life  of  the  race  from  year  to 
year. 

It  must  have  been  a  great  joy  to  breathe 
the  air  in  the  periods  of  Renaissance, 
whether  in  Physics  or  in  Letters — to  live 
in  the  days  that  preceded  the  Reforma- 
tion, when  classical  scholarship  was  revived 
and  placed  again  before  the  world  :  to  live 
in  the  days  of  Elizabethan  Letters  and  to 
feel  the  inspiration  of  Spenser  and  Shake- 
speare !  Some  of  us  know  what  it  is  to 
have  seen  the  immense  discoveries  and 
bright  hopefulness  of  physical  science  in 
the  century ;  but  there  has  been  nothing  in 
all  these  periods  so  glorious  as  the  day 
when  the  theology  of  the  Christian  Church 
shall  rise  again,  having  lost  nothing  that 
was  good  and  true  in  the  past,  and  be  re- 
constructed on  the  double  foundation  of  the 
Divine  Fatherhood  and  the  Incarnation  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.     We  shall  then  see, 

I  believe,  an  inspiring  reconciliation,  the 

156 


THE    NEW   DOGMA 

greatest  that  can  be  made.  We  have  often 
hoped  for  reconciliation  between  science 
and  reHgion,  where  none  is  needed ;  often 
hoped  for  reconciliation  between  reason 
and  faith,  where  none  is  needed,  since  each 
works  in  a  different  department  of  human 
life  ;  but  there  is  a  reconciliation  needed 
for  w^hich  all  devout  and  reverent  men 
yearn,  and  it  is  the  reconciliation  between 
dogma  and  religion.  They  are  not  an- 
tagonistic, and  if  they  have  ever  been 
forced  into  lamentable  rivalry,  they  will 
make  a  covenant  of  peace  in  the  love  of 
the  Father  and  of  Jesus  Christ  His  son. 

One  of  the  most  suggestive  pictures  of 
Italian  Art  represents  the  meeting  of  St. 
Dominic  and  St.  Francis.  St.  Dominic 
belonged  to  that  order  which  was  charged 
with  the  development  and  conservation  of 
doctrine  and  who,  on  account  of  their 
theological  bitterness  and  often  unreason- 
ing persecution,  were  called  the  'hounds 

of   the    Lord.'     St     Francis,   as   a    great 
157 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

French  critic  declared,  was  the  most 
beautiful  Christian  character  since  the  days 
of  Jesus,  and  it  was  he  who  revived 
religion.  In  this  picture  St.  Dominic,  the 
author  and  defender  of  dogma,  and  St. 
Francis,  the  humble  disciple  and  exem- 
plifier  of  Jesus  Christ,  have  met,  and,  fling- 
ing their  arms  round  one  another's  necks, 
they  kiss  each  other,  so  uniting  what  God 
had  joined  and  no  man  ought  to  put 
asunder — the  joyful  religion  of  the  soul 
and  the  reverent  dogma  of  the  intellect ;  a 
felicitous  prophecy  of  the  day  when 

Mind  and  soul,  according  well, 
May  make  one  music  as  before, 
But  vaster. 


158 


THE    MACHINERY    OF  A    CON 
GREGATION 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    MACHINERY    OF    A    CONGREGATION 

Persons  living,  and  who  may  live  for 
many  years,  can  remember  when  the  con- 
gregation was  a  very  simple  organism — a 
mere  Bathybius  of  the  ecclesiastical  world. 
People  attended  two  services  on  Sunday ; 
the  children  went  to  Sunday-school ;  the 
minister  had  a  class  to  prepare  young  peo- 
ple for  their  first  sacrament.  Congrega- 
tions of  the  lighter  kind  indulged  in  a 
social  meeting  once  a  year,  and  those  of  a 
sterner  cast  adventured  with  a  mission. 
The  buildings,  besides  the  church,  con- 
sisted of  a  vestry,  and,  in  some  advanced 
cases,  a  hall  under  the  church,  low-roofed 
and  dark,  with,  it  might  be,  a  couple  of 
cellar   rooms,   where  the   young  folk,  re- 

i6i 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

turning  to  the  primitive  state  of  Christian- 
ity, met  in  dens  and  caves  of  the  earth. 
Neither  did  the  congregation  involve 
itself  in  any  public  efforts  for  the  regen- 
eration of  society,  and  would  have  been 
amazed  had  they  been  asked  to  take  steps 
for  the  reduction  of  public-houses  in  the 
town,  or  to  open  an  institute  for  the  social 
and  intellectual  culture  of  the  neiorhbour- 
ing  district.  Some  enthusiastic  people, 
pioneers  of  a  coming  day,  carried  on  Httle 
enterprises  of  their  own  on  week-days  in 
the  under  ground  premises  —  a  Band  of 
Hope  or  a  sewing  party  ;  but  such  efforts 
were  a  mere  by-play,  and  never  passed  into 
the  main  current  of  the  congregational 
life.  The  duty  of  the  minister  was  to  pre- 
pare his  sermons  for  Sunday,  and  to  visit 
the  people  from  house  to  house  ;  the  duty 
of  the  people  was  to  attend  church  twice 
on  Sunday  and  to  hear  the  sermons.  The 
congregation    in    those  days  was  a   quiet 

old-fashioned    business,  with  a  monopoly 

162 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATIO. 

of  its  district,  and  an  unquestioned  hold 
upon  its  people,  and  was  conducted  with- 
out excitement  or  bustle. 

Life,  within  a  generation,  has  been  elec- 
trified in  every  department  ;  it  has  become 
keen,  intense,  inventive,  an  endless  race, 
in  which  the  most  far-seeing,  ingenious, 
adaptable  outruns  his  neighbour  and  wins. 
One  has  sometimes  washed  that  the 
Church  of  Christ  had  been  untouched 
by  this  feverish  spirit,  and  in  the  midst  of 
a  surrounding  unrest  had  afforded  a  haven 
of  peace.  One,  however,  recognises  the 
fact  that  the  Church  cannot  live  isolated 
and  detached  in  the  world,  but  that  the 
tides  of  the  outside  w^orld  must  also  be 
felt  in  her  life.  For  weal  or  woe — more 
for  weal  than  woe — the  congregation  has 
awaked  and  kept  pace  with  the  times. 
The  yearly  report,  with  its  departments 
of  work,  its  various  offices,  its  elaborate 
finance,  rivals   that    of   any    company   in 

commerce.      Church  buildings  now  have 
163 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

every  kind  of  accommodation,  from  libra- 
ries and  class-rooms  to  workshops  and  de- 
veloping-rooms  :  they  are  lit  by  electricity, 
and  the  organ  is  played  and  driven  by 
electricity  ;  and  one  fearfully  anticipates 
the  day  when  the  phonograph  will  be  used 
in  the  pulpit,  and  the  eloquence  of  famous 
men,  living  and  deceased,  be  laid  on  at 
will.  The  minister  is  a  man  of  affairs, 
issuing  a  yearly  programme,  like  a  busi- 
ness circular  with  its  striking  features  and 
new  items,  supervising  the  most  various 
agencies,  loaded  with  correspondence,  and 
carrying  a  diary  in  which  he  hastily  books 
engagements  like  a  man  on  the  exchange. 
Church-work  has  become  a  science  which 
young  ministers  have  to  learn,  and  the 
congregation  is  perhaps  the  most  highly 
developed  institution  in  human  society. 
Let  us  review  and  estimate  its  parts.  And 
we  shall  begin  with — 

The  Home  of  the  congregation,  and  one 

may  lay   down   those   principles    about  a 

164 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

church,  that  whatever  be  the  style  of  archi- 
tecture it  must  be  (a)  beautiful,  because 
this  is  the  House  of  God,  and  people  are 
to  meet  here  for  His  worship.  The  church 
should  excel  the  houses  of  the  worshippers 
in  fineness  and  honesty  of  workmanship. 
Whether  it  be  intended  to  hold  one  hun- 
dred or  two  thousand,  whether  it  stand  in 
a  rich  district  or  a  poor,  whether  it  be 
built  of  stone  or  brick  or  wood — those  are 
matters  of  circumstance, — the  material 
must  be  the  best  of  its  kind,  and  every 
inch  of  the  work  must  be  done  in  the 
sight  of  God,  Who  desireth  truth  and 
hateth  iniquity.  Rotten  stuff,  half-done 
work,  tricky  expedients,  deceptive  appear- 
ances, gaudy  decorations,  are  to  be  con- 
demned everywhere,  but  most  of  all  where 
people  meet  in  the  name  of  Christ  and 
pray  to  be  created  in  His  likeness.  Better 
rough  stone  walls  than  gay  colours  hiding 
a  lie,  better  bare  white    deal  than   wood 

stained  after  the    likeness   of   mahogany, 
165 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

where  the  colour  cannot  hide  the  unwor- 
thiness  of  the  substance.  It  is  sufficient 
that  a  church  should  be  nothing  more  at 
first  than  four  strong  walls  and  a  sound 
roof,  and  that  from  year  to  year  the  people 
that  have  been  blessed  therein  should 
give,  one  a  painted  window,  another  a 
piece  of  oak  carving,  a  third  a  Holy 
Table,  a  fourth  a  font,  till  the  church 
house  be  filled  and  beautified  with  the  gifts 
of  her  children,  and  it  is  for  the  minister 
to  insist  on  that  morality  which  is  the 
foundation  of  true  beauty,  and  to  move 
his  people  to  bestow  those  gifts  which 
form  its  crown. 

(b)  The  church  ought  also  to  be  com- 
fortable, not  in  the  way  of  softness  and 
luxury — a  place  where  people  can  lounge 
through  divine  worship,  or  a  place  fitted 
up  with  every  convenience  of  a  theatre, 
for  it  is  well  that  people  should  under- 
stand that  they  come  here  on  an  august 
service,  not  to    a    social  party, — but  it  is 

1 66 


MACHINERY   OF   A   C0x\GREGAT10N 

fitting  that  the  church  should  have  the 
best  atmosphere — air  cool  in  summer  and 
warm  in  winter,  and  always  pure.  There 
are  churches  so  conservative  that  they 
not  only  retain  the  former  habits  of 
thought,  but  the  very  air  of  the  past,  so 
that  one  entering  after  a  long  absence 
recognises  the  fragrance,  since  nothing 
refreshes  memory  like  smell,  and  is  again 
with  his  mother  in  the  family  pew,  while 
the  old  minister,  after  preaching  an  hour, 
is  giving  out  his  third  head.  Were  the 
air  of  one  of  the  hermetically  sealed 
churches  bottled  and  analysed  by  some  of 
those  awful  scientific  inventions  that  are 
making  darkness  as  light,  it  might  be  pos- 
sible to  write  the  history  of  the  congrega- 
tion with  a  likeness  of  the  minister.  The 
material  lies  m  the  building.  Bad  air  is 
an  auxiliary  of  Satan,  and  accounts  for 
one  man  sleeping,  for  another  fidgeting, 
for  another  detecting  a  personal  attack  in 

the  sermon,  for  some  one  smelling  heresy. 
167 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

It  was  carbonic  acid  gas  he  really  sniffed. 
And  indeed  the  analogy  is  complete. 
Fresh  air  and  orthodoxy  go  together  as 
well  as  good  temper  and  charity. 

[We  touch  at  this  point  the  inexhaust- 
ible question  of  draughts,  and  must  leave 
it  alone,  with  the  following  observations 
for  the  comfort  of  the  ministry  : — That 
there  never  has  been  any  church  yet  with- 
out a  draught :  that  it  is  the  only  reason 
why  certain  people  do  not  attend  with  reg- 
ularity :  that  a  draught  of  ten-horse  power 
would  not  keep  them  from  the  theatre  or 
a  reception  :  that  the  officers  of  the  church 
will  receive  fifty  suggestions  a  year  how  to 
cure  the  draught,  but  that  the  genuine 
church  draught  cannot  be  cured  by  phys- 
ical expedients  :  that,  in  short,  it  is  a  de- 
vice of  the  Prince  of  the  power  of  the  air, 
as  any  man  with  Celtic  blood  in  his  veins 
knows.] 

(c)  And  the  church  ought  to  be  conve- 
nient, by  which  one  means  suitable  for  its 

i68 


MACHINERY    OF   A    CONGREGATION 

purpose,  a  place  in  which  every  one  can 
see  and  hear  the  preacher.  There  are  per- 
sons who  listen  better  with  their  eyes 
closed,  and  who  would  be  content  behind 
a  Norman  arch — sight  distracts  their  men- 
tal processes, — but  the  majority  under- 
stand with  their  eyes, — finding  a  running 
commentary  on  the  preacher's  words  in 
the  changing  expression  of  his  mobile 
face.  [Nothing  is  trivial  which  concerns 
the  success  of  the  minister  s  work,  and  it 
is  a  grave  question  whether  he  ought  not 
to  be  clean  shaven,  that  the  play  of  his 
lips,  as  he  pleads,  may  further  his  words.] 
Architecture  is  a  noble  art,  and  archi- 
tects are  doubtless  of  the  salt  of  the  earth, 
but  nothing  will  convince  me  that,  as  a 
body,  they  ever  thmk  of  the  acoustic  per- 
fection of  a  church  or  of  anything  else,  ex- 
cept that  it  be  a  monument  to  their 
genius.  If  it  should  happen  that  the 
people    are    able  to  hear  the  sermon    on 

the  day  of  dedication,  then  their  gratitude 
169 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

is  almost  slavish,  and  it  is  boasted  that 
St.  Bede's  is  '  a  good  church  for  hearing ' — 
they  might  as  well  have  blessed  the  archi- 
tect for  giving  them  a  roof, — while,  in  ten 
cases  out  of  twenty,  the  office-bearers 
spend  a  certain  proportion  of  their  time 
in  shifting  people  from  pews  where  they 
cannot  hear,  or  considering  whether  the 
minister  will  be  able  to  convey  his  mes- 
sage best  by  a  sounding-board  or  wires 
stretched  across  the  church.  It  is  mad- 
dening to  think  that  in  the  Church  of 
Christ  a  minister  has  to  be  estimated  in 
certain  places  by  his  vocal  apparatus,  so 
that  one  with  a  voice  and  little  else  ob- 
tains a  large  sphere  of  work,  and  one  with 
everything  except  a  throat  of  brass  is  con- 
fined to  a  small  church  ;  but  such  anom- 
alies will  continue  till  it  be  legal  that  a 
church,  which  is  useless  for  its  purpose,  be 
returned  to  the  architect  as  a  ship  which, 
not  constructed  to  float,  would  be  refused 

by  a  shipowner. 

170 


MACHINERY   OF    A   CONGREGATION 

With  regard  to  auxiliary  accommoda- 
tion, it  must  vary  with  circumstances,  but 
a  minister,  as  the  responsible  head  of  the 
work,  should  insist  on  this  minimum  for  a 
city  church. 

(a)  A  large  hall,  built  on  the  same  floor 
as  the  church,  and  on  an  ecclesiastical 
plan,  so  that  when  a  person  enters  it  he 
may  have  a  feeling  that  he  is  in  church. 
This  is  a  matter  of  roof,  windows,  and 
reader's  desk,  with  a  general  severity  of 
treatment.  All  week  day  services,  except 
Christmas  and  Good  Friday,  and  New 
Year's  Day,  when  kept,  should  be  held 
here.  It  does  not  matter  for  effect  upon 
the  worshippers  or  preacher  how  many  are 
present,  but  only  that  the  place  be  full. 
A  crowd  in  the  hall  would  only  be  a 
handful  in  the  church,  and  handfuls  scat- 
tered about  a  large  building  can  neither 
warm  the  heart  for  prayer  nor  cheer  the 
minister  for  speech.     The  place  can  also 

be  used  as  a  gathering-place  for  the  Sun- 
171 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

day-school  and  for  philanthropic  meetings 
by  reversing  the  chair  and  having  a  plat- 
form at  the  opposite  end  from  the  desk. 

(5)  A  business-room  fitted  up  with  a 
round  table,  somewhat  imposing  chairs 
and  chairman's  seat,  a  safe,  and  case  for 
books.  Here  let  all  the  committees  of 
the  church  meet,  and  the  finance  be  man- 
aged. If  you  crush  a  dozen  men,  accus- 
tomed to  other  things,  into  a  small  mean 
room,  till  one  has  to  sit  on  the  end  of  a 
sofa  and  two  share  a  chair,  then,  owing  to 
the  infirmity  of  human  nature,  even  men 
of  light  and  leading  will  get  slipshod,  and 
neglect  not  only  rules  of  order,  but  also  of 
speech. 

(c)  A  ladies'  room,  which  the  women  of 
the  congregation  can  furnish  and  decorate 
to  their  hearts'  content,  and  which  shall 
be  the  centre  of  all  their  special  work. 

(d)  A  young  people's  room,  almost  as 

large  as  the  hall,  but  not  so  ecclesiastical, 

where  the  various  societies  of  the  church 
172 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

will  make  their  home,  and  where  social 
meetings  can  be  held.  There  ought  to  be 
bookcases  for  the  various  libraries  of  the 
church,  and  a  collection  of  sacred  art  on 
the  walls,  as  well  as  a  case  of  maps.  This 
room  should  be  enriched  as  time  goes  on 
with  nice  pieces  of  furniture,  till  it  be- 
come a  drawing-room,  a  library,  an  art 
gallery,  and  a  museum,  besides  a  lecture- 
room  on  occasion. 

(e)  As  many  unappropriated  rooms  as 
can  be  got,  each  approachmg  twenty  feet 
square,  and  furnished  with  a  table,  chairs, 
and  a  blackboard,  for  classes  of  any  kind, 
fellowship  meetings,  and  miscellaneous 
purposes.  [One  room  should  be  allotted 
to  the  choir,  and  placed  under  the  author- 
ity of  the  organist.] 

(/)  The  minister's  vestry,  which  should 

be  a  large,  airy,  well  lit,  and  well  furnished 

room.     This  is  the  minister's  sanctum,  and 

he  gives  it  the  last  touches  of  habitation 

himself  —  keeping  here    a  few    favourite 
173 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

books,  a  George  Herbert  in  the  facsimile 
edition,  the  Fioretti  of  St.  Francis,  Ruth- 
erford's Letters,  Whittier's  poems,  some- 
thing of  Christina  Rossetti,  that  he  may  be 
in  good  company  before  he  goes  into  his 
awful  work  :  and  hanging  here  a  Perugino 
and  an  Angelico,  that  he  may  look  on  the 
Crucified  and  see  the  holy  angels  before 
he  faces  his  fellow-men.  The  vestry  must 
be  regarded  as  the  absolute  property  of 
the  minister,  where  he  can  be  alone  and 
have  fellowship  with  God  before  he  speaks 
in  His  name,  and  where  he  can  receive 
those  who  must  see  him  alone.  When 
a  church  abounds  in  rooms  extempore 
meetings  are  not  to  be  held  in  the  vestry, 
and  desultory  conversations  on  the  weather 
can  be  conducted  more  profitably  in  the 
lobby.  Finally,  if  it  be  possible,  there 
should  be  greenery  and  flowers  round  the 
church  and  in  the  minister's  vestry  accord- 
ing to  their  season,  snowdrops  and  lilies 
174 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

and  roses,  for  his   own  good  and  that  of 
the  people. 

We  come  now  to  the  Government  of 
the  congregation,  and  shall  escape  the 
most  wearisome  and  futile  of  all  contro- 
versies by  conceding  at  once  and  without 
reserve  the  divine  right  of  all  systems — 
first,  because  they  have  each  one  been 
proved  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and 
the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  to  say  nothing  | 
of  the  Fathers  and  early  centuries  ;  and, 
secondly,  because  each  of  the  three  great 
systems  which  found  themselves  on  Holy 
Scripture — the  Episcopal,  Congregational, 
and  Presbyterian  (the  Methodists  frarrkly 
admit  that  theirs  is  an  invention) — has 
been  blessed  of  God,  and  so  has  been 
sanctioned.  With  regard  to  a  congrega- 
tion, the  first  point  is  that  there  be  some 
government,  so  that  it  be  a  regiment, 
not  a  mob,  and  the  next  point  that  the 

rule  be  in  the  hands  of  one  man.     Gov- 

175 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

ernment  cannot  be  placed  in  commission 
and  twelve  men  divide  authority.  Whether 
the  ruler  be  called  Tzar  or  President,  he  is 
a  necessity,  and  in  the  congregation  he 
ought  to  be  the  minister.  Who  fitter  than 
the  man  who  has  to  lead,  guide,  represent 
the  congregation  ?  Who  is  most  con- 
cerned in  its  success,  most  hurt  by  its 
failure  ?  If  not,  then  who  is  it  to  be  ? 
The  noisiest,  the  wealthiest,  the  most  ob- 
stinate ?  If  a  congregation  wishes  to  be 
saved  from  patronage  and  tyranny  let  it 
support  the  legitimate  ruler  and  put  down 
any  usurper.  If  a  private  member  be- 
comes lord  of  a  congregation,  then  no  man 
of  self-respect  will  consent  to  be  minister, 
and  people  of  self-respect  will  refuse  to 
take  any  share  in  the  work.  One  of  the 
worst  calamities  that  can  befall  a  congre- 
gation is  such  an  usurpation,  all  the  more 
if  it  has  been  gained  by  wealth,  and  one 
of  the  happiest  events  is  the  deposition  of 

the  usurper.     Since   some  one  must  rule, 

176 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

the  reign  of  the  minister  is  the  best  guar- 
antee for  the  freedom  and  harmony  of 
the  congregation,  since  he  takes  the 
throne  in  virtue  of  his  office,  and  does 
not  seize  it  through  ambition  or  the  giving 
of  money. 

[The  minister  must  rule  in  the  spirit 
of  Jesus — with  sympathy,  tact,  generosity, 
and  impartiahty.  Ministerial  government 
is  too  often  discredited  by  coarse  men, 
who,  being  raised  suddenly  to  power,  lose 
their  heads  and  outrage  congregations,  or 
undisciplined  natures  who,  by  eccentrici- 
ties of  temper  or  habit,  play  the  fool  in 
face  of  the  people.] 

If  the  minister  is  to  be  responsible   and 

actual  ruler  it  is  on  that  account  the  more 

necessary  that  he  be  assisted  by  a  Council, 

such   as   is  provided  in  the   Presbyterian 

polity  by  the  Court  of    Elders,  and  in  the 

Congregational  by  the  Court  of   Deacons, 

and  which,  if  his  system  afford  none,  he 

were  wise  to  create  for  himself.     It  should 
177 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

consist  of  the  heads  of  departments  in  the 
congregational  work,  such  as  the  superin- 
tendents of  Sunday-schools,  treasurers  of 
finance,  chairman  of  guilds,  representative 
of  the  mission  church,  a  member  of  the 
choir  committee,  the  officer  who  allocates 
sittings  [who  must  be  an  incarnation  of 
wisdom,  patience,  courtesy,  and  selfless- 
ness], with  some  venerable  men  of  long 
experience,  who  shall  sit  without  portfolios. 
This  is  the  Minister's  Cabinet,  which  holds 
all  the  reins  in  its  hand,  and  in  which  every 
interest  is  represented.  It  is  dangerous  to 
allow  bodies  to  rise  in  the  Church  who 
have  no  voice  in  the  Cabinet,  and  over 
which  it  has  doubtful  control. 

[In  some  places  the  Sunday-school  and 
the  Young  Men's  Society  are  simply  con- 
federated powers  with  the  congregation, 
not  an  integral  part,  and  the  government 
negotiates  with  them.] 

Colonies  without  share  in  the  Imperial 

Government  are  certain,  sooner  or  later, 

178 


MACHINERY   OF   A    CONGREGATION 

to  start  a  disastrous  war  of  indepen- 
dence. 

When  this  council  meets  in  its  court- 
room, with  the  minister  presiding,  it  should 
be  the  brain  of  the  congregation  gathering 
unto  itself  every  nerve,  sensitive  to  the 
faintest  feeling  in  the  body,  guiding  the 
furthest  member.  Such  a  council  at  once 
commands  the  confidence  and  audience  of 
the  people,  and  the  minister,  sitting  in 
council  like  the  Pope,  is  in  administration, 
so  far  as  may  be  good  for  him  and  the 
people,  infallible  and  absolute. 

This  Cabinet  ought  to  take  an  unspoken 

oath  of  secrecy  in  order  that  their    work 

may  be  done  in  freedom,  and  the  minister 

ought  to  treat  his  Cabinet  with  unreserved 

confidence,  not    only   laying  before  them 

his  definite  proposals,  but  giving  them  an 

idea    of   his    plans,    allowing    his    faithful 

councillors  a  share  of  his  joys  and  sorrows, 

and  taking  their  advice  on  many  details  of 

his   private    life.     They    ought   to    know 
179 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

when  he  goes  from  home,  where  he  is,  and 
how  it  fares  with  him,  and  all  the  changes 
in  his  life  at  least  twenty-four  hours  before 
the  public.  If  the  Council  be  opposed  to 
any  of  his  proposals  the  minister  had  better 
pause,  but  if  they  approve,  then  he  can  go 
forward  with  boldness.  This  may  be 
monarchy,  but  it  is  constitutional  mon- 
archy. 

It  goes  without  saying,  that  with  so 
much  partially  sanctified  human  nature, 
there  will  be  some  insubordinate  members 
in  a  congregation,  who  are  dissatisfied 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  pulpit  or  the 
methods  of  work,  and  feel  bound  to 
create  disturbance.  If  they  be  at  the 
bottom  reasonable  and  pious  people,  then 
the  minister  will  show  them  every  con- 
sideration, explaining  and  conciliating  as 
becometh  a  servant  of  Christ.  If  they  be 
Pharisaical  or  quarrelsome,  then  the  min- 
ister had  better  not  waste  time  on  confer- 
ences, which  will  only  feed  such   people's 

i8o 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

vanity,  but  insist  with  courtesy  on  their 
departure  to  some  other  church  where 
they  will  feel  themselves  more  at  home. 
And  if  they  should  refuse,  then  the  minis- 
ter ought  to  consult  his  council  and  com- 
pel the  mutineers  to  leave  the  ship,  for  a 
ship  may  weather  many  storms  from  with- 
out, but  mutiny  among  the  crew  is  de- 
struction. A  congregation  will  be  stronger 
by  the  loss  of  a  dozen  people  who  are 
carping  at  everything,  and  proclaiming 
aloud  their  dissatisfaction  to  a  district. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  person  with  a 
mutinous  record  should  arrive,  and  desire 
to  be  received,  he  ought  to  be  firmly 
refused.  It  is  neither  wise  nor  kindly  to 
give  welcome  or  have  anything  to  do  with 
one  who  has  done  his  best  to  wreck  a 
neighbouring  congregation,  and  to  embit- 
ter a  brother  minister's  Hfe.  There  is  a 
comity  of  nations,  and  there  ought  to  be  a 
comity  of  congregations  (and  denomina- 
tions), so  that  every  door  should  be  closed 

i8i 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

against  the  ecclesiastical  anarchist.  If  any 
one  inquire  what  is  to  become  of  him, 
why  not  have  in  every  large  city  a  chapel 
where  this  class  could  worship  together, 
and  be  kept  in  quarantine  till  they  show 
signs  of  penitence,  when  they  could  be 
absolved,  and  be  again  admitted  among 
healthy  people  ?  And  to  the  pastorate  of 
this  chapel  of  correction  a  minister  who 
had  wrecked  two  churches  by  bad  temper 
and  overbearing  conduct  might  be  ap- 
pointed. Under  such  a  mutual  discipline 
both  minister  and  people  would  have  a 
good  chance  of  being  cured. 

Ministers  might  very  well  copy  the 
etiquette  of  the  medical  profession,  which 
is  distinguished  by  the  respect  its  mem- 
bers show  to  one  another.  No  minister 
should  criticise  another  minister  in  public, 
nor  should  he  allow  any  person  to  discuss 
his  minister  with  him,  nor  should  he  visit 
the  people  of  another  minister,  nor  in  any 

way,  direct  or  indirect,  try  to  attract  them 

182 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

from  his  brother.  Every  minister  should 
at  all  times  stand  by  his  brethren,  and 
should  do  his  brother's  work  for  him  in 
any  time  of  trouble. 

After  a  wise  government,  which  is  the 
brain,  the  welfare  of  the  congregation  de- 
pends on  fellozuship,  which  is  the  heart 
of  the  congregation.  Like  a  college  or  a 
regiment,  the  congregation  ought  to  have 
a  just  and  proper  esprit  de  co7ps  which  is 
born  of  high  traditions,  is  fed  by  unselfish 
ends,  is  fruitful  of  costly  services.  The 
richest  heritage  of  an  old  congregation  is 
not  her  endowments,  but  her  history,  the 
names  of  saints  which  can  be  read  on  her 
faded  rolls,  and  the  record  of  their  works. 
The  ambition  of  a  new  congregation 
ought  to  be  the  attainment  of  a  worthy 
model  in  its  first  plastic  years.  For  char- 
acter is  transmitted  in  ecclesiastical  as 
surely  as  in  family  life,  so  that  men  have 
the  hereditary  features  of  their  congrega- 
tion— a  certain  accent  in  doctrine,  a  cer- 
183 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

tain  manner  in  work,  a  certain  attitude  of 
faith. 

[Certain  churches,  owing  to  high  posi- 
tion and  ancient  descent,  may  think  too 
mightily  of  themselves,  and  this  came  to 
my  mind  once  when  the  beadle  of  a  church 
in  my  own  communion  inquired  of  me 
where  I  was  settled,  and  whether  I  was 
actually  ordained,  preparing  me  for  a  thin 
audience,  as  the  Doctor  was  known  to  be 
from  home,  but  cheering  me  before  next 
service  with  the  information  that  a  fair 
number  of  people  had  returned — a  circum- 
stance at  which  he  could  not  conceal  his 
astonishment.  If  a  man  be  not  humbled 
after  that  discipline,  and  reduced  to  his  low 
estate,  then  he  is  incorrigible.  It  also 
came  home  to  me  with  much  conviction 
that  another  church,  also  of  my  own  com- 
munion, thought  too  little  of  itself  when 
the  office-bearers  explained  to  me  in  the 
vestry  that  their  minister  was   so   learned 

and  accomplished  that  he  ought  to  be  pro- 
184 


MACHINERY   OF   A    CONGREGATION 

moted,  as  they  expected  he  soon  would  be, 
to  a  West-end  church,  and  that  the  best 
minister  for  them  was  a  plain  man  with- 
out too  much  education,  '  in  fact,  just  like 
yourself.*  Both  extremes  are  to  be 
avoided.] 

Congregational  patriotism  demands  that, 
whatever  differences  of  opinion  the  minis- 
ter may  have  with  his  people,  or  whatever 
fatherly  rebukes  he  may  feel  it  his  duty  to 
give  them,  he  should  neither  say  one  word 
against  them  outside,  nor  allow  any  reflec- 
tion to  be  made  upon  them  by  a  stranger. 
No  man  exposes  his  wife's  faults,  and  no 
one  dares  criticise  a  wife  to  her  husband  ; 
and  people  and  minister  are  united  in  a 
sacred  bond,  sharing  a  common  love  and 
reputation.  And  the  same  Church  feeling 
should  keep  the  people  true  to  their  minis- 
ter. If  he  has  failings,  or  makes  mistakes, 
they  are  to  be  covered  ;  if  he  has  excel- 
lencies, and  does  good  work,  that  is  to  be 
told.     He    ought   to    be    to  his  own  the 

i8s 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

ablest  preacher  they  ever  heard,  and  the 
most  eloquent.  People  of  other  churches, 
with  eminent  divines,  are  amazed  and 
smile  at  this  fond  imagination,  for  the  last 
time  the  worthy  man  was  in  their  pulpit 
he  was  particularly  dull.  To  them — yes, 
because  he  was  not  their  minister  ;  they 
judged  him  by  his  poor  commonplace  dis- 
course (an  ambitious  effort  he  had  made 
for  this  famous  pulpit  !  better  have  taken 
one  of  his  simple  addresses),  but  his  peo- 
ple read  in  between  the  lines — his  visits  in 
sickness,  his  sympathy  in  trial,  his  endless 
kindnesses  to  them  and  theirs.  They  edit 
his  sermon  sitting  in  their  pews,  with  foot- 
notes that  by-and-by  eclipse  the  original 
till  the  humble  building  of  grey  stone  is 
covered  with  roses  and  clematis,  and  be- 
comes a  very  picture  of  beautiful  colour. 
The  people  are  fairly  overcome  by  his 
lovely  illustrations,  his  deep  arguments, 
his  moving  appeals  ;  but  he  did  not  write 

iS6 


MACHINERY    OF    A    CONGREGATION 

them  last  week,  they  are  deeds  —  ten, 
twenty,  thirty  years  old. 

The  very  church  has  a  hold  on  the  pious 
mind,  that  grows  with  the  years  and  lasts 
till  death  removes  the  man  to  the  upper 
sanctuary.  People  with  prosaic  minds  see 
him  on  Sunday  morning  passing  a  dozen 
fashionable  suburban  churches,  and  trudg- 
ing down  to  a  dingy  place  in  the  city,  and 
they  refer  it  to  his  old-fashioned  ways  and 
that  cat-spirit  which  clings  to  a  building. 
They  do  him  less  than  justice  ;  they  have  too 
little  imagination.  He  has  his  own  reasons, 
this  unsentimental,  matter-of-fact  man. 

[The  hardest  man  has  a  tender,  poetical, 
romantic  side,  and  he  expects  it  to  be 
touched  from  the  pulpit.  He  brings  out 
his  few  pet  flowers  on  Sunday  morning 
and  gives  them  a  good  exposure,  in  hope 
that  their  dusty  leaves  may  be  refreshed 
by  a  shower,  and  a  bud  or  two  open  in  the 

kindlv  sunshine.] 

187 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

Our  friend  has  his  reasons  for  his  city 
pilgrimage,  and  they  do  him  credit.  When 
he  came  up  from  the  country  he  stumbled 
into  that  church  one  morning,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  he  had  been  expected.  An 
elder  shook  him  by  the  hand  and  took 
him  to  his  pew  ;  afterwards  he  asked  him 
to  dinner,  and  told  him  that  there  would 
be  a  place  for  him  every  Sunday.  There 
is  a  pew  in  that  church  he  could  find  in 
the  dark,  for  there,  just  below  that  win- 
dow, under  the  gallery  twenty  from  the 
door,  Christ  and  he  met  face  to  face.  He 
was  married  in  that  church,  and  there  he 
offered  his  children  to  God.  During  his 
great  trial  it  was  the  word  he  heard  in  that 
church  which  sustained  him,  and  down 
its  aisles  he  has  carried  the  holy  vessels 
of  the  Sacrament  for  thirty  years.  He  is 
poor  who  has  no  sacred  places  on  earth, 
and  this  is  to  the  man  as  the  gate  of 
heaven.  A  congregation  made  up  of 
such    men    is   like    one    of   those  ancient 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

buildings  wherein  the  stones  have  grown 
into  a  solid  mass.  It  may  be  human  for 
the  suburban  minister  to  regard  this  man 
with  desire  as  he  passes  his  door,  for  who 
would  not  wish  to  have  so  loyal  a  spirit? 
But  that  minister  is  unworthy  of  the 
name  of  Christ  if  he  approves  not  his 
constancy,  and  thanks  God  his  brother 
down  town  has  got  such  a  strength  at  his 
right  hand. 

[The  opposite  of  this  true  soul  is  the 
religious  nomad  who  changes  his  church 
every  three  years,  who  assures  each  minis- 
ter on  arrival  that  in  his  poor  judgment 
he  is  the  most  brilliant  preacher  in  the 
city,  who  begins  by  attending  every  ser- 
vice in  the  week,  and  can  hardly  be  kept 
out  of  the  mothers'  meeting,  who  regrets 
that  he  cannot  give  to  the  funds  as  his 
means  have  long  been  consecrated  in  a 
special  direction — whose  wife  calls  tow- 
ards the  end  of  the  three  years  to  explain 

that  she  feels  it  her  duty  to  go  with  her 

189 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

husband,  who  is  receiving  much  benefit 
from  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  Vials  of 
the  Revelation,  given  by  the  new  minister 
of  a  neighbouring  church.  A  young  minis- 
ter is  much  lifted  by  this  enthusiastic  gen- 
tleman's arrival,  and  somewhat  cast  down 
by  his  departure  :  an  older  man  regards 
his  arrival  with  equanimity,  and  suggests 
that  he  be  placed  in  a  seat  which  is  devas- 
tated by  the  draught.] 

We  come  now  to  the  m{7id  of  the  con- 
gregation, and  it  must  be  felt  by  every  one 
that  at  present  an  enormous  responsibility 
lies  on  the  Church  with  regard  to  the  in- 
struction of  the  young  (and  others)  in  the 
Christian  faith.  Whatever  may  be  done  in 
State  schools, — and  one  rejoices  to  know 
that  much  is  done, — it  is  evident  that  the 
Church  will  have  to  educate  her  people 
after  a  thorough  manner  in  her  creed. 
For  this  purpose  there  ought  to  be  an  ed- 
ucational ladder  constructed  in  every  con- 
gregation, which  will  receive  the  young 
190 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

child  into  the  infant-class  of  the  Sunday- 
school  at  the  foot,  and  as  a  man,  give 
him  the  latest  results  of  Biblical  research 
at  the  top.  A  fully  equipped  congrega- 
tion will  have  its  elementary  department 
in  the  Sunday-school,  its  secondary,  or 
Grammar-school,  in  the  Bible-classes  for 
young  men  and  women,  and  its  Univer- 
sity in  the  Bible-guild  for  the  class  who 
wish  to  pursue  their  studies  in  sacred  lit- 
erature. 

What  is  needed,  above  all  things,  for 
the  Sunday-school,  is  capable  and  trained 
teachers.  It  is  worse  than  a  mistake  to 
hand  over  children  to  the  care  of  some 
ignorant  young  woman  (or  man)  who 
has  been  appointed  because  her  mother 
thought  she  would  be  steadied  by  relig- 
ious work,  or  because  she  thought  it  was 
correct  to  take  some  such  task,  who  comes 
when  she  has  no  other  engagement,  and 
who  does  not  know  the  bare  facts  of  Bible 

history. 

191 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

[One  quite  delightful  young  woman  in- 
formed me,  in  a  viva  voce  examination, 
that  '  Herod  did  not  get  our  Lord  in  the 
Massacre  of  the  Innocents  because  His 
mother  hid  Him  among  the  bulrushes.' 
She  was  a  Sunday-school  teacher,  and  just 
the  person  for  whom  the  little  mischiefs 
in  a  class  would  lay  traps  with  an  inno- 
cent face.] 

It  lies  upon  the  minister,  with  the  su- 
perintendent of  the  school,  to  see  that  no 
one  ever  obtains  a  class  without  giving 
some  evidence  of  fitness,  both  in  knowl- 
edge and  teaching  faculty,  that  the  teach- 
ers attend  a  class  where  they  may  be 
drilled  in  the  week's  lesson,  and  that  the 
embryo  teacher  be  reared  in  the  Guilds 
with  a  view  to  this  work.  When  a  school 
is  staffed  with  well-educated  teachers,  then 
the  minister  can  use  all  his  influence  to 
secure  the  attendance  of  the  children  of 
the    congregation,    because    he    can    give 

pledges  that  the  teaching  of  Scripture  on 

192 


MACHINERY   OF    A   CONGREGATION 

Sunday  will  be  on  a  par  with  the  teaching 
of  languages  on  the  week  days. 

If  the  congregation  be  organised  on  the 
Guild  system,  then  there  ought  to  be  one 
for  young  men  from  sixteen  to  thirty — 
no  one  being  allowed  to  enter  after 
twenty-five,  or  to  remain  after  thirty  (it 
may  come  to  pass  otherwise  that  the 
Guild  consists  of  middle-aged  men  whose 
very  appearance  scares  a  young  fellow 
from  the  door),  and  another  for  young 
women  of  a  corresponding  age  : — age 
must  not  be  looked  at  too  curiously  in 
this  Guild,  but  marriage  must  entail  re- 
tirement, since  an  unmarried  girl  and  a 
married  woman  look  at  life  from  quite 
different  standpoints.  Those  two  Guilds 
may  have  four  departments  :  a  religious, 
in  the  Bible  class  which  is  to  be  thoroughly 
taught  and  examined,  with  occasional  de- 
votional meetings ;  a  literary,  in  which 
good  books  and  subjects  of  social  interest 

can  be   discussed  ;  a  practical,  which  will 

193    ■ 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

undertake  some  charitable  work  ;  and  (if 
thought  desirable)  a  physical,  for  gymnas- 
tics and  excursions.  There  had  better  be 
a  Guild  for  the  children,  called  by  a  tak- 
ing name,  and  holding  half  a  dozen  bright 
meetings  every  winter,  in  a  prettily  dec- 
orated room,  and  with  liberal  use  of 
a  good  lantern,  to  interest  the  children 
in  missions,  temperance,  and  charity. 
When  there  is  any  considerable  number 
of  domestic  servants  in  the  church,  they 
ought  to  be  formed  into  a  Guild — which 
will  be  mainly  social,  because  they  are  apt 
to  be  isolated  and  to  have  little  share  in 
the  church  life,  and  because  there  is  no 
class  in  a  congregation  more  loyal,  liberal, 
kindly. 

The  Bible  Guild  will  crown  and  com- 
plete the  system,  and  is  strongly  to  be 
recommended  in  this  day.  The  minister 
here  will  be  president,  and  the  members 
having  come    to    years  of  discretion,  and 

being,  as  is  presumed,  the  most  intelligent 
19+ 


MACHINERY  OF   A   CONGREGATION 

people  in  the  congregation,  will  form  a 
fellowship  of  students.  The  subscriptions 
will  go  to  form  a  library,  to  which  every 
new  book  with  good  reputation  will  be 
added,  till  the  congregation  possesses 
through  this  Guild  a  fairly  complete  col- 
lection of  contemporaneous  Bible  litera- 
ture. If  the  winter  be  divided  into  two 
terms,  then,  at  each,  one  book  of  the  Old 
or  New  Testament  Scriptures  is  laid  out 
for  study — a  careful  syllabus  being  pre- 
pared by  the  committee.  Papers  are  read 
by  members  on  the  authorship,  history, 
form,  ideas  of  the  book,  which  will  open 
discussion.  It  is  remarkable  what  work 
will  be  put  into  such  papers,  and  how 
grand  and  luminous  the  Bible  grows  under 
this  examination. 

The  Society  of  Christian  Endeavour  is 
an  alternative  to  the  junior  Guilds  on  the 
religious  and  practical  side,  but  it  does  not 
embrace  so  wide  a  field,  nor  afford  such  a 

complete    culture.     It    has     friends    and 
195 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

critics,  but  the  general  consensus  of 
opinion  seems  to  be  that  the  movement 
has  done  much  spiritual  good  and  is  likely 
to  be  an  auxiliary  to  the  Church.  This 
is  the  final  test  of  all  societies  in  the 
machinery  of  the  congregation — do  they 
help  or  weaken  the  Church  ?  Are  they 
branches  springing  out  of  the  trunk  and 
gathering  into  their  leaves  the  air  and 
light  of  heaven — a  beauty  and  strength? 
Then  let  them  be  fostered.  Or  are  they 
suckers  drawing  away  so  much  of  the  sap 
from  the  tree  itself  ?  a  luxuriant,  unprofit- 
able, mutinous  undergrowth  —  then  let 
them  be  cut  down  and  done  away  with, 
for  they  are  in  any  case  only  human  in- 
ventions, but  the  Church  is  of  Christ  and 
the  home  of  the  soul. 

When  we  come  to  the  ivoi^k  in  the 
Church,  it  will  be  agreed  that  every  large 
congregation  should  have  an  outlet  for  its 
energy  and  liberality,  and  I  wish  to  urge 
that  this,  wherever  possible,  should  be  a 

iq6 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

church  in  some  poor  district.  What  is 
called  a  Mission  Hall  is  an  unfortunate 
form  of  Christian  enterprise,  and  it  is 
hoped  will  soon  be  obsolete.  First,  be- 
cause it  means  waste  of  labour  and  worse, 
the  hall  gathering  but  a  handful  of  re- 
ligious paupers  who  come  to  it  as  to  a 
soup-kitchen  for  what  they  hope  to  get, 
and  being  converted  anew  with  every  fresh 
distribution  of  alms  :  who  almost  never 
rise  to  the  independence  and  life  of  a  con- 
gregation, and  who  seem  to  constitute  a 
servile  body  on  which  the  philanthropy  of 
the  wealthy  mother  church  can  experiment 
and  expend  itself.  If  the  money  lavished 
on  suoh  unhealthy  plants  had  been  devoted 
to  Foreign  Missions  or  night  schools,  it 
had  done  ten  times  more  good  and  as  much 
less  evil. 

Also  because  such  squalid  places,  with 
their  half-educated  agents  and  starved 
services,    are    an    insult   to  working  men. 

Why  should  a  man  not  have  a  good  church 
197 


a:^- 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

and  a  proper  service  because  he  earns 
wages  and  lives  in  a  small  house  ?  If  any 
difference  be  made,  then  the  finer  build- 
ings and  the  lovelier  worship  ought  to  be 
for  the  east  end,  where  there  is  less  beauty 
in  the  homes  and  a  harder  fight  for  life. 
If  the  proletariat  is  to  be  won  for  Christ, 
it  will  not  be  by  patronage  but  by 
brotherly  sympathy  and  co-operation.  The 
ideal  is  that  a  Church  of  the  west  and 
another  of  the  east  should  go  into  partner- 
ship, combining  their  resources  of  means 
and  men,  and  so  the  gaping  wounds  of 
society  will  be  bound  and  healed ;  for 
Christ  alone,  by  His  humanity  and  Church, 
can  be  the  meeting-place  for  all  kinds  and 
conditions  of  men. 

All  machinery,  however  well  conceived 
and  enthusiastically  worked,  will  be  un- 
blessed and  useless  unless  the  Church  has 
spiritual  aims,  and  be  touched  with  heaven- 
liness,    unless  she  be  cleansed  from  false 

ideals  and  a  worldly  spirit. 
198 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

One  is  indeed  afraid  that  many  of  our 
people  in  this  material  age  are  coming  to 
regard  the  Church  as  a  huge  business  con- 
cern, with  its  elaborate  statistics,  its  annual 
balance-sheet,  its  endless  inventions,  its 
spirit  of  bustling  prosperity.  The  world 
sees  one  congregation  revive  its  dwindling 
attendance  with  an  organ,  another  selling 
its  site  in  a  poor  district  and  migrating  to 
the  suburbs,  the  amazing  advertisements  of 
sermons  in  the  newspapers,  the  schemes 
for  raising  money,  from  bazaars  to  anni- 
versaries. They  do  not  despise  the  Church 
for  these  expedients ;  far  worse — they 
sympathise  with  her.  She  also  finds  com- 
petition keen,  and  cannot  conduct  business 
after  the  old-fashioned  way.-  She  also  has 
to  cut  the  rates,  and  build  bigger  steamers, 
and  puff  her  goods.  With  our  elaborate 
financial  and  statistical  blue-books  in  his 
hands,  a  layman  soon  creates  his  standard 
of  success  for  a  minister,  and  unless  he  be 

a  man  of  very  high  spirituality  it  is  certain 

199 


THE    CURE   OF    SOULS 

to  be  tangible  and  material.  Are  all  the 
sittings  let  ?  Are  the  office-bearers  mer- 
chant princes  ?  Are  there  Guilds  of  every 
kind  and  description  ?  Is  there  a  surplus 
balance  at  the  close  of  the  year  ?  Then, 
says  this  shrewd,  respectable  man,  here  is 
a  successful  minister.  Perhaps,  but  not 
on  that  evidence.  Here  again  is  a  church 
with  half  its  sittings  unlet,  with  obscure 
names  in  its  report,  with  small  funds. 
Some  want  of  energy  here  ?  Perhaps, 
and  perhaps  not.  It  may  be  that  this  man 
is  making  men,  while  the  other  has  only 
seat-holders.  The  blue-books  serve  some 
purpose,  and  with  the  terror  of  the  great 
permanent  officials  before  the  eyes,  one 
dare  not  speak  lightly  of  their  columns  ; 
but  one  may  protest  against  the  success  of 
Christ's  Church  being  tried  by  figures  of 
sittings  and  money. 

What    kind   of  man   flourishes   best  in 
this    commercial    atmosphere  ?     Not    the 

prophet ;  he  withers  and  dies  in  the  dust 

200 


MACHINERY   OF   A   CONGREGATION 

of  figures ;  but  instead  of  him  you  will 
get  that  latest  product  of  machinery — the 
organiser.  No,  he  is  not  very  much  of  a 
preacher  or  scholar,  but  he  is  a  good  busi- 
ness man  and  a  capital  manager.  Let  us 
give  its  due  to  every  talent — and  organ- 
ising is  one, — but  one  grows  suspicious, 
and  hesitates  to  have  this  man  for  his 
minister.  Let  us  make  him  an  electoral 
agent,  or  the  manager  of  a  working-class 
insurance  company  that  collects  by  streets, 
or  let  him  be  sent  round  to  clean  up 
the  house  for  some  big  heart  who  has  so 
many  people  he  can't  get  them  into  their 
Guild  partitions.  Do  not  hand  over  a 
number  of  poor  souls  to  his  preaching ;  it 
will  be  all  from  the  book  of  Numbers. 
Everybody  will  be  a  secretary  or  some- 
thing in  a  year,  but  the  people  will  be 
going  to  the  next  church  for  their  daily 
bread.  In  fact,  the  organiser  doesn't  need 
people  ;  a  really  capable  man  of  this  type 
could  organise  a  congregation  on  a  desert 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

island.  What  we  want  to-day  is  not  or- 
ganisers, but  preachers,  and  every  hindrance 
ought  to  be  removed  that  a  man  who 
can  preach  may  have  an  opportunity  of 
fulfilling  his  high  calling.  One  Minister 
laboured  for  three  years  night  and  day, 
and  when  His  ministry  was  suddenly 
closed  He  had  only  a  roomful  of  people. 
But  one  man  was  St.  John  and  one  woman 
was  St.  Mary  Magdalene.  A  single  Raphael 
counts  more  than  hundreds  of  clever  im- 
pressionist sketches.  One  saintly  soul 
reared  by  a  patient  ministry  will  weigh 
down  in  the  scales  mobs  of  hearers. 

Our  illustrations  have  been  taken  from 
the  congregation  of  the  city,  but  let  no 
man  think  lightly  of  the  village  church 
and  its  faithful  pastor. 

Where  would  city  Christianity  be  with- 
out the  men  and  women  of  strong,  stable 
character  that  are  added  from  the  country  ? 
Who    made   their   character  ?     This   man 

who    is   unheard    of,    who    is   too  often 

202 


MACHINERY   OF   A    CONGREGATION 

badgered  about  raising  money,  who  has 
the  lowest  stipend,  who  goes  home  feeling 
himself  a  burden  on  the  Church.  Let 
him  lift  up  his  head.  His  is  lasting  work, 
for  he  has  wrought  in  imperishable  ma- 
terial— not  in  silver  or  gold,  but  in  the 
souls  of  men.  His  master  knoweth  :  his 
reward  remaineth.  Year  after  year  some 
nameless  monk  labours  on  a  rough  block 
in  some  cathedral  column  till  it  turns  into 
the  very  likeness  of  Christ.  He  dies,  and 
they  bury  him  in  a  forgotten  grave  ;  but 
every  morning  the  light  streaming  through 
the  eastern  window  over  the  head  of 
Christ  as  from  the  eyes  of  the  Judge 
touches  with  gold  that  image  of  the  Lord 
wrought  by  His  servant,  and  as  the  gener- 
ations pace  the  aisles  beneath,  high  above 
them,  beautiful  and  unchanging,  remains 
the  unknown  worker's  memorial. 


203 


THE   WORK   OF   A    PASTOR 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    WORK    OF    A    PASTOR 

When  the  Church  of  Christ  receives  a  re- 
inforcement of  common  sense,  and  man- 
ages her  affairs  with  as  much  shrewdness 
as  a  bank,  one  is  certain  that  her  rulers 
will  make  some  salutary  reforms.  Incapa- 
ble men  will  be  removed  without  hesita- 
tion, on  the  sound  principle  that  the  min- 
istry exists  for  the  Church,  and  not  the 
Church  for  the  ministry.  The  man  and 
his  work  will  also  be  harmonised,  so  that 
a  scholar  who  can  find  his  way  through 
documents  J.  E.  P.  and  D.  like  a  game- 
keeper over  a  moor,  will  not  be  set  to 
organise  an  East-end  mission  ;  nor  will  a 
robust  evangelist,  whose  sermon  consists 

of  three  sentences  which  are  charged  with 

207 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

truth  but  defy  punctuation,  be  set  down 
to  minister  from  January  to  December  to 
thinking  people.  Perhaps  some  of  us 
may  also  live  to  see  the  day  when  four 
struggling  congregations  in  the  city  will 
be  amalgamated,  and  one  large  and  pow- 
erful church  will  command  and  serve  a 
district.  A  congregation  of,  say,  4000 
people  all  told — with  a  church  holding 
2000,  which  would  be  sufficient  accom- 
modation for  all  likely  to  be  present  at  any 
single  service — would  have  various  un- 
deniable and  important  advantages  over 
its  four  predecessors. 

(a)  The  necessary  sermon  production 
would  be  reduced  by  three-fourths,  and 
the  sermon  would  be  more  telling,  because 
the  preacher  would  have  the  electrical 
stimulus  of  a  mass  of  human  life,  and  not 
have  to  select  the  largest  group  in  a 
half-empty  church  for  his  practical  les- 
sons,  lest,  wandering  hither    and    thither 

among  solitariness,  he  might  be  charged 

208 


THE   WORK   OF   A    PASTOR 

with  personality.  It  is  a  sin  of  maladmin- 
istration, for  which  some  one  will  have 
to  answer,  that  men  wear  out  their  hearts 
preaching  to  a  handful  whose  words 
might  have  edified  thousands. 

(b)  Ministers  and  officers  would  be 
delivered  from  the  harassing  financial 
problem  how  to  make  nineteen  shillings 
do  the  work  of  twenty,  and  the  people 
from  the  weary  drip  of  collection  appeals, 
both  because  the  income  would  be  much 
larger  and  the  expenditure  would  be  con- 
siderably smaller.  Giving  is  a  fine  grace 
and  an  excellent  discipline  for  character, 
but  endless  and  pathetic  begging  for 
money,  with  all  sorts  of  expedients  from 
bazaars  to  tea-meetings,  is  not  at  all 
within  the  range  of  grace,  and  aids  no 
one's  character. 

(^)  The  practical  work  of  the  congre- 
gation would  be  carried  on  with  vigour 
and    an    affluence    both    of    agents    and 

finance — the  men  who  could  give,  and  the 
209 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

men  who  could  counsel,  and  the  men  who 
could  work,  and  the  men  who  could  pray 
— the  four  who  ought  to  lift  the  paralysed 
human  mass — working  in  a  happy  part- 
nership. 

(d)  The  common  life  of  a  congregation 
would  be  free  from  the  envies,  jealousies, 
ambitions,  and  quarrels  which  embitter  the 
narrower  life  of  smaller  bodies.  Diotrephes 
is  a  mighty  man  among  two  hundred 
poor  people,  and  threatens  loudly  what  he 
will  do  if  he  does  not  get  his  own  way  ; 
but  when  Diotrephes  lands  in  a  large  con- 
gregation and  finds  himself  of  no  account, 
he  is  the  most  agreeable  and  deferential  of 
men,  for  there  is  none  so  mean  and  cow- 
ardly as  the  congregational  bully. 

(e)  And,  which  is  my  present  point,  in 
such  a  congregation  one  minister  would 
not  be  expected  to  fill  all  offices — to  be  a 
preacher,  a  lecturer,  a  teacher,  an  organ- 
iser, a  financier,  an  ecclesiastic,  a  pastor, 
but  there  would  be  a  staff  among  whom 


THE  WORK    OF   A  PASTOR 

the  varied  and  complicated  duties  of  the 
modern  ministry  could  be  divided. 

It  may  be  a  counsel  of  perfection  to 
expect  that  church  business  should  be  as- 
signed to  an  order  of  ecclesiastics,  who 
would  preside  at  courts,  draw  up  reports, 
concoct  motions,  carry  out  legislation,  at- 
tend committees,  and  fulfil  one  hundred 
irksome  duties  which  try  the  ordinary 
minister,  and  take  him  away  from  his 
study  and  his  people. 

[The  ecclesiastic  is  a  genus  by  itself, 
whose  members  may  have  to  waste  their 
time  in  the  pulpit  and  in  going  from  door 
to  door,  but  whose  mind  lives  and  moves 
and  has  its  being  in  the  sphere  of  law  : 
who  discharge  the  most  tiresome  sapless 
work  ever  laid  to  the  hands  of  man,  with 
conscientious  pains  and  accuracy,  who  re- 
ceive no  thanks  from  ungrateful  brethren, 
with  a  boyish  love  for  disorderliness  ;  but 
who  are  greatly  missed  after  they  are  dead, 
and  the   business  which  they  once  man- 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

aged  has  got  into  a  hopeless  tangle.  As 
I  have  seen  a  tree  drawing  its  nourish- 
ment out  of  a  bed  of  coal,  so  those  patient 
men  may  find  food  in  their  marvellous 
phraseology,  and  at  a  time  one  has  seen 
them  lifted  with  some  secret  joy.] 

And  it  may  be  another  vain  hope  that 
the  whole  supervision  of  Biblical  and 
theological  instruction  will  be  given  in 
each  large  congregation  (or  group  of  con- 
gregations) to  one  of  those  accomplished 
young  scholars  who  are  now  coming  out 
from  our  colleges  by  the  score,  and  often 
are  broken-spirited  because  they  can  get 
no  work  to  do,  being  inclined  to  read 
essays  in  the  pulpit,  and  being  afflicted 
with  fits  of  painful  silence  in  sick-rooms — 
who  are  a  priceless  waste  product.  It  is, 
however,  surely  within  practical  affairs 
that  this  congregation  of  ours  should  have 
two  ministers — one  to  be  the  preacher  and 
the  other  the  pastor.  Many  men  combine 
the  two  gifts  of  the  shepherd,  to  feed  and 


THE    WORK    OF   A    PASTOR 

to  watch,  but  as  Nature  specialises  on  hefA 
higher  levels,  it  is  rare  that  one  should 
excel  both  in  the  pulpit  and  the  house. 
One  man  grudges  every  hour  outside  his 
study,  revels  in  books  as  a  fish  in  water, 
can  conceive  no  more  exhilarating  pleas- 
ure than  reasoning  out  a  truth  to  its  con- 
clusion ;  does  not  notice  people  on  the 
street,  and  is  painfully  embarrassed  if  they 
notice  him  ;  hungers  and  thirsts  for  Sun- 
day morning,  when  he  can  deliver  his 
message.  He  rejoices  in  forty  minutes' 
intellectual  conflict  with  a  crowd  of  human 
souls,  but  afterwards  does  mot  wish  to  see 
the  face  of  man  ;  in  the  reaction  which 
follows  a  great  effort  he  is  company  for 
no  one,  and  resigns  his  church  every  Sun- 
day evening.  God  made  him  for  his 
work,  and  he  does  it  well.  His  brother  is 
cabined  among  books,  and  longs  to  be 
among  people  ;  he  plans  a  round  of  visits, 
as  one  going   for  a  pleasant   tour,  and  yet 

will  delay  an  hour  because  two  little  chil- 
213 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

dren,  being  sent  with  a  message,  insist  on 
giving  it  in  person  ;  old  people's  faces 
light  up  at  the  sight  of  him  across  the 
street,  and  he  must  needs  go  over  to  shake 
hands  ;  there  is  something  in  the  grip  of 
his  hand  and  the  sound  of  his  voice  which 
sends  people  on  their  way  rejoicing — so 
simple  a  thing  is  human  nature.  When 
he  enters  a  house  there  is  a  general  stir 
and  an  adhesion  of  the  whole  ^household  ; 
sick  people  declare  with  solemnity  that  he 
does  more  for  them  than  the  doctor,  and 
in  the  hour  of  trial  the  thoughts  of  a  fam- 
ily turn  by  instinct  to  this  man.  He  also 
is  of  God's  designing,  and  wonderfully 
fitted  for  his  end.  Between  these  men 
there  must  be  no  comparison,  for  the  two 
are  the  piers  of  the  arch. 

The  pastoral  instinct  is  quite  unworldly, 
and  in  this  utilitarian  day,  with  its  domi- 
nant precept  of  '  payment  by  results,'  can 
hardly    be   understood.     What    the    ideal 

pastor  sees  in  every  member  of  his  congre- 
214 


THE    WORK   OF   A   PASTOR 

gation  is  not  some  one  that  will  be  of  use 
to  him  because  he  is  such  a  good  worker, 
but  a  soul  that  is  given  him  for  twenty 
years  by  Christ,  and  whom  he  must  pre- 
pare for  everlasting  life.  The  pastor  does 
not  delay  over  the  appearance  and  circum- 
stances of  a  man  any  more  than  Christ 
did ;  like  his  Master  he  pierces  to  the 
spiritual  part,  the  real  man.  He  is  always 
impressed,  and  sometimes  quite  over- 
whelmed, by  the  value  of  the  immortal 
soul — this  soul,  still  plastic  and  unfired, 
for  which  he  can  do  so  much  or  so  little. 
He  trembles  for  it  when  he  sees  the  de- 
stroyer hovering  over  it  like  a  hawk 
poised  in  mid-air,  and  would  fain  have  it 
gathered  beneath  Christ's  wing.  He  tends 
and  waters  it,  like  a  tender  vine,  noting 
every  green  leaf  and  anxiously  searching 
for  the  promise  of  autumn.  He  works 
on  it  with  all  kinds  of  tools,  fashioning 
and  shaping  it,  as  he  has  opportunity, 
after   the    likeness  of   Christ.     That   is  a 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

lovely  legend  which  describes  how  St. 
John  demanded  of  a  presbyter  the  young 
man  he  had  committed  to  his  oversight, 
and  when  he  found  the  young  man  had 
lapsed  from  the  faith  and  become  a  robber, 
how  the  old  apostle  sought  him  out  and 
fell  at  his  feet,  and  would  not  rest  till  the 
wanderer  had  consented  to  return  to  the 
fold.  It  was  worthy  of  the  friend  who 
had  lain  on  Jesus'  bosom  and  drank  in  the 
Master's  spirit. 

;  His  people  are  ever  in  the  pastor's  heart, 
/although  this  may  not  appear  in  his  or- 
dinary manner.  He  claims  identity  with 
them  in  their  joy  and  sorrow  and  endless 
vicissitudes  of  life.  No  friend  is  blessed 
with  any  good  gift  of  God  but  he  is  also 
richer.  No  household  suffers  loss  but  he 
is  poorer.  If  one  stand  amid  great  temp- 
tation he  is  stronger;  if  one  fall  he  is 
weaker.  When  any  one  shows  conspicu- 
ous grace    the  pastor  thanks  God  as  for 

himself ;  when  any  one  refuses  His  call  he 
216 


THE    WORK   OF    A    PASTOR 

is  dismayed,  counting  himself  less  faithful. 
He  waits  eagerly  to  see  whether  one  who 
groped  in  darkness  has  been  visited  by  the 
light  from  on  high,  whether  another,  who 
seemed  to  have  gone  into  a  far  country, 
has  set  his  face  towards  the  Father's  house. 
One  family  he  watches  with  anxiety,  bcv 
cause  he  does  not  know  how  they  will 
bear  a  heavy  stroke  of  adversity,  and 
another  with  fear  lest  rapid  success  in  this 
world  may  wean  their  hearts  from  God. 
He  trembles  for  this  merchant  lest  he  fall 
below  the  rule  of  Christ  and  do  things 
which  are  against  conscience  ;  he  rejoices 
over  another  who  has  stood  fast  and  re- 
fuses to  soil  his  hands.  He  inquires  on 
every  hand  about  some  young  man  of 
whom  he  expects  great  things  ;  he  plans 
how  another  may  be  kept  from  tempta- 
tion. One  thing  he  cannot  do  :  criticise  ( 
his  people  or  make  distinctions  among 
them.     Others,  with    no  shepherd    heart, 

may  miss  the  hidden  goodness ;  he  searches 

217 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

for  it  as  for  fine  gold.  Others  may  judge 
people  for  faults  and  sins ;  he  takes  them 
for  his  own.  Others  may  make  people's 
foibles  the  subject  of  their  raillery  ;  the 
pastor  cannot  because  he  loves.  Does 
this  interest  on  the  part  of  one  not  related 
by  blood  or  long  friendship  seem  an  im- 
pertinence ?  It  ought  to  be  pardoned,  for 
it  is  the  only  one  of  the  kind  that  is 
likely  to  be  offered.  Is  it  a  sentiment  ? 
Assuredly,  the  same  sublime  devotion 
which  has  made  Jesus  the  Good  Shepherd 
of  the  soul.  If  the  pastoral  instinct  be 
crushed  out  of  existence  between  the 
upper  and  lower  millstones  of  raging  sen- 
sationalism and  ecclesiastical  worldliness, 
then  the  Christian  Church  will  sink  into 
a  theological  club  or  a  society  for  social 
reform  :  if  it  had  full  play  we  might  see  a 
revival  of  religion  more  spiritual  and 
lasting  than  any  since  the  Reformation. 
While  the    theologian    has  been   often 

hated,  and  the  preacher  belittled,  the  pas- 
218 


THE   WORK   OF   A    PASTOR 

tor  has  always  been  a  favourite,  and  his] 
beautiful  duties  have  frequently  appealed 
to  the  poetic  imagination.  How  finely 
has  Goldsmith  touched  the  simplicity  and 
saintly  poverty  of  the  village  pastor,  his 
sympathy  with  all  kinds  of  suffering,  and 
his  unbounded  charity ;  his  powerful  pres- 
ence and  spiritual  succour  at  the  last  hour. 
But  he  is  most  happy  in  his  description  of 
that  fond  love  which  is  in  the  religious 
sphere  like  the  maternal  instinct  in  na- 
ture : — 

'  Thus  to  relieve  the  wretched  was  his  pride, 
And  ev'n  his  failings  leaned  to  virtue's  side  ; 
But  in  his  duty  prompt,  at  every  call, 
He  watched  and  wept,  he  prayed  and  felt,  for 

all  ; 
And,  as  a  bird  each  fond  endearment  tries 
To  tempt  its  new-fledged  offspring  to  the  skies, 
He  tried  each  art,  reproved  each  dull  delay, 
Allured  to  brighter  worlds,  and  led  the  way.' 

Wordsworth,  ever  sensible  to  the  beauty 
of  quietness,  has  his  pastor  also  : 

2T9 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

'The  shepherd  of  his  flock,  or  as  a  king 
Is  styled,  when  most  affectionately  praised, 
The  father  of  his  people.' 

And  to  the  grace  of  this  conception 
Victor  Hugo  owes  his  noblest  character, 
the  Bishop  in  Les  Miserables,  who  was  so 
beloved  by  his  people  that  they  called  him 
Monseigneur  Bienvenu  : — 

'Prayer,  celebration  of  the  religious  offices, 
alms,  consoling  the  afflicted,  the  cultivation  of  a 
little  piece  of  ground,  fraternity,  frugality,  self- 
sacrifice,  confidence,  study,  and  work,  filled  up 
each  day  of  his  life.' 

Nor  are  we  to  suppose  that  this  ideal  is 
confined  to  poetry,  for  it  was  at  least  twice 
realised  in  history, — when  Richard  Baxter 
was  minister  of  Kidderminster,  and  George 
Herbert  was  rector  of  Bemerton.  One 
was  a  Puritan,  and  a  type  of  his  kind  : 
keen,  restless,  conscientious,  ever  arguing 
for  peace,  who  made  another  place  of  his 
town  ;  and  I  copy  the  title-page  of  his 
book  : — ■ 


THE   WORK   OF  A   PASTOR 
Gildas  Salvianus ; 


The 
REFORMED 

Pastor. 

Shewing  the  nature  of  the  Pastoral  work ; 

Especially  in  Private  Instruction  and 

Catechizing. 

With  an  open  Confession  of 
our  too  open  Sins, 

Prepared  for  a  day  of  Humiliation  kept  at 
Worcester,  Decemb.  4.  1655. 

By  the  Ministers 
of  that   County,   who    subscribed   the  Agree- 
ment for  Catechizing  and  Personal  Instru- 
ction, at  their  entrance  upon  that  work. 


By  their  unworthy  fellow-servant 

Richard  Baxter. 

Teacher  of  the  Church  at  Kederminster. 


Luke  12.  47.     'YiKzlvoq  61  6  6ovlo(;  6  yvovq  ro  BD.rjixa  rov  kv- 
piov  eavTov,  koI  jut)  iroi/ndaag,  fi^Se  Tocjjaag  rrpoq  to  Oe'kriiia  avrov, 

daprjGETaL  iTo72.dc. 

221 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

The  other  was  an  Anglican,  and  typical 
of  his  kind  :  cultured,  reverent,  charitable, 
ever  praying  for  peace,  who  made  his 
parish  as  a  colony  of  heaven  on  earth  ; 
and  I  copy  the  title-page  of  his  book  : — 

A    PRIEST 

To  the 

TEMPLE, 


OR 

The  Countrey  Parson 

His 

CHARACTER, 

And 
Rule  of  Holy  Life. 


The  Authour, 
Mr.  G.  H. 


1652. 

Many  books  on  the  pastoral  office  have 
been  written  since  those  two  servants  of 
Jesus  entered  into  the  higher  service,  and 
modern  treatises  on  practical  theology 
have  their  own  value,  meeting  the  changed 


THE   WORK   OF   A   PASTOR 

conditions  of  life,  but  none,  so  far  as  I 
know,  have  such  depth  of  piety  or  such 
sweetness  of  spirit.  If  one  prefers  to  read 
George  Herbert,  it  is  because  he  has  more 
grace  of  letters  and  tenderness  of  soul — 
being  orator  of  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge and  a  poet, — and  surely  nothing 
better  has  ever  been  written  on  the  shep- 
herd care  of  the  minister  than  his  Parso7i 
171  Circuit,  who  doth  not  disdain  to  enter 
into  the  poorest  cottage,  '  though  he  even 
creep  into  it,'  'for  both  God  is  there  also, 
and  those  for  whom  God  dyed '  ;  and  who 
when  he  comes  to  any  house  first  blesseth 
it,  and  then,  'as  hee  finds  the  persons  of 
the  house  imployed  formes  his  discourse.' 
So  he  passes  through  the  parish,  com- 
mending or  chiding,  exhorting  or  advising, 
with  such  tact  and  sincerity  that  it  is  no 
wonder  that  people  blessed  him  as  he 
passed,  and  left  the  plow  in  the  furrow 
when  George  Herbert's  church  bell  rang 

for  prayers. 

223 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

[The  preacher  has  admiration  for  his 
peculiar  reward,  but  the  pastor  has  affec- 
tion :  if  the  preacher  be  ill  there  are  para- 
graphs in  the  newspapers  ;  if  the  pastor, 
there  is  concern  in  humble  homes.  No 
man  in  human  society  gathers  such  a  har- 
vest of  kindly  feeling  as  the  shepherd 
of  souls,  none  is  held  in  such  grateful 
memory.] 

His  work,  like  that  of  a  physician,  may 
ibe  divided  into  outdoor  and  indoor  ;  visi- 
\tation  and  consultation ;  and  one  is  haunt- 
^'ed  by  the  secret  feeling  that  visitation — 
except  in  sick  and  special  cases — is  be- 
littled by  superior  persons  in  the  ministry, 
and  regarded  as  a  waste  of  time.  They 
imagine  that  some  of  their  brethren  go 
from  door  to  door  because  it  is  a  release 
from  the  sterner  work  of  the  study,  and  an 
agreeable  occupation — being  a  gentle  form 
of  physical  exercise,  and  a  complete  rest 
for  the  mind.     The  visitor  suggests  a  man 

delivering  circulars  or  a  lady  making  calls. 
224 


THE   WORK   OF   A   PASTOR 

[Certain  have  given  occasion  for  this 
caricature  of  the  pastor,  who  gad  about 
from  house  to  house  without  purpose,  and 
w^hose  conversation  is  trivial  gossip,  who 
for  their  own  sakes  and  other  people's 
had  better  be  chained  to  a  desk  daily,  and 
receive  no  food  till  they  translate  one 
of  St.  Augustine's  sermons.  It  is  those 
weaklings  who  have  depreciated  the  pas- 
toral office  and  robbed  it  of  sweet  so- 
lemnity.] 

With  the  true  pastor,  visitation  is  a 
spiritual  labour,  intense  and  arduous,  be- 
side which  reading  and  study  are  light  and 
easy.  When  he  has  been  with  ten  fami- 
lies, and  done  his  best  by  each,  he  comes 
home  trembling  in  his  very  limbs  and 
worn-out  in  soul.  Consider  what  he  has 
come  through,  what  he  has  attempted, 
what,  so  far  as  it  can  be  said  of  a  frail 
human  creature,  this  man  has  done.  He 
has  tasted    joy   in   one  home,  where  the 

husband    has    been  restored    to   his   wife 
225 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

from  the  dust  of  death  ;  he  has  shared  sor- 
row with  another  family  where  pet  Mar- 
jorie  has  died  ;  he  has  consulted  with  a 
mother  about  a  son  in  some  far  country, 
whose  letters  fill  the  anxious  heart  with 
dread ;  he  has  heard  a  letter  of  twelve 
pages  of  good  news  and  overflowing  love 
which  another  son  has  sent  to  his  mother ; 
he  has  carried  God's  comfort  to  Darby 
and  Joan  reduced  suddenly  to  poverty, 
and  God's  invitation  to  two  young  people 
beginning  life  together  in  great  pros- 
perity. He  has  to  adjust  himself  to  a  new 
situation  in  each  house,  and  to  cast  himself 
with  utter  abandonment  into  another  ex- 
perience of  life.  Before  evening  he  has 
been  a  father,  a  mother,  a  husband,  a  wife, 
a  child,  a  friend ;  he  has  been  young, 
middle-aged,  old,  lifted  up,  cast  down,  a 
sinner,  a  saint,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
life. 

[This  is  not  flexibility — the    tact    of  a 

man    suiting    himself    to    circumstances, 
226 


THE   WORK   OF  A    PASTOR 

but  within  his  soul  neutral  and  detached, 
— it  is  sympathy,  the  common  feeling  of 
the  Body  of  Christ] 

It  is  exhausting  to  rejoice  or  to  sor- 
row, but  to  taste  both  sensations  in  suc- 
cession is  disabling ;  yet  this  man  has 
passed  through  ten  moods  since  midday, 
and  each  with  all  his  strength.  His  ex- 
periences have  not  all  been  wiped  out 
as  a  child's  exercise  from  a  slate  ;  they 
have  become  a  strata  in  his  soul. 

[The  coming  of  a  beautiful  idea  gives 
the  thinker  a  shock  of  delight,  from  which 
he  does  not  recover  for  an  hour :  what 
must  it  be  for  one  to  bathe  himself  in  the 
passion  of  humanity  for  five  hours  ?] 

It  is  not  possible  for  the  pastor  to  read 
or  write  after  this  effort  of  love.  He  is 
empty  and  helpless  :  he  has  given  away 
himself. 

The  pastor  of  a  large  congregation  must 
be  very  careful    and   methodical,    and  be- 
sides his  ordinary  pocket  address-book,  he 
227 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

attaches  great  importance  to  two  books. 
As  soon  as  a  family  comes  to  the  church 
he  sends  them  a  schedule — a  kind  of  cen- 
sus paper,  about  which  there  will  be  some 
simple  jesting,  which  mollifies  everything, 
— in  which  they  write  the  names  of  the 
household  and  the  ages  of  all  below  six- 
teen, telling  also  who  are  communicants 
and  who  have  done  church  work. 

[The  pastoral  memory  grows  to  won- 
derful attainments,  but  it  can  hardly  hold 
all  the  details  of  say  three  hundred  families. 
It  is  not  supernatural,  as  the  people  sup- 
pose, neither  is  his  knowledge.] 

The  contents  of  this  schedule  are  then 
written  into  a  large  book,  finely  papered 
and  strongly  bound,  like  a  ledger ;  and  in 
this  book  the  pastor  has  his  congregation 
before  him  at  any  moment.  He  reminds 
himself  who  ought  to  become  communi- 
cants, or  ought  to  take  part  in  the  church 
work,  and  where  recruits  can  be  found  for 

the  guilds  and  classes.     Another  book  the 

228 


THE   WORK   OF   A    PASTOR. 

pastor  keeps  in  a  drawer  and  shows  to  no 
one  :  it  must  be  destroyed  on  his  death. 
Its  pages  contain  the  spiritual  history  and 
character  of  his  people — the  results  of  his 
diagnosis — and  from  time  to  time  he  erases 
or  adds  to  the  description.  Were  he  to 
show  his  photograph  to  a  man,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  one  would  not  recognise  himself, 
but  that  would  only  prove  our  amazing 
ignorance  of  ourselves,  and  the  advantage 
of  having  a  faithful  and  skilled  physician. 
The  careful  pastor  will  make  a  yearly 
visitation  of  his  people,  announcing  his 
dates  and  localities  from  the  pulpit,  ac- 
cording to  an  ancient  fashion,  and  he  will 
omit  no  one,  however  rich,  for  he  needs 
the  pastor  most ;  or  however  poor,  for  he 
will  value  him  most.  This  can  only  be  a 
brief  visit — a  mere  review  and  interchange 
of  greetings — but  it  is  wonderful  how 
much  can  be  accomplished  in  fifteen 
minutes  when  the  visitor  is  expected,  when 

he  is  known  and  loved,  when  gossip  is  left 
229 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

out,  and  it  is  understood  that  business  has 
to  be  done.  One  thing  the  pastor  will  not 
do,  and  that  is  to  offer  prayer  in  every 
house,  because  no  man  can  pray  four  times 
an  hour  for  an  afternoon  without  the 
most  miserable  formality,  and  because 
prayer  ought  to  spring  out  of  the  occasion. 
VThere  are  moments  when  conversation 
moves  onwards  till  it  reaches  the  brink  of 
prayer.  The  visit  then  culminates  and 
completes  itself  in  prayer,  and  the  petitions 
come  from  the  heart.  After  which  the 
pastor  instantly  leaves,  bidding  his  people 
good-bye  before  the  Throne  of  Grace, 
and  in  the  very  presence  of  the  Lord. 

[This  regular  visitation  secures  that  no 
one  in  the  congregation  be  overlooked  ;  it 
satisfies  people  voracious  of  attention — 
they  have  had  their  due ;  it  gives  the 
people  an  opportunity  of  telling  any  un- 
known trouble,  offering  any  suggestion,  or 
clearing  themselves  of  any  grievance.     As 

it  progresses  there  is  an  increasing  famili- 
230 


THE   WORK  OF   A    PASTOR 

arity  between  the  pew  and  the  pulpit, 
till,  when  the  last  district  has  been  over- 
taken, the  whole  congregation  and  the 
pastor  are  in  touch.] 

Sometimes  the  pastor  receives  a  sudden 
impulse  to  go  to  a  certain  house,  and 
whether  it  come  to  him  in  his  room  or  on  the 
street,  he  obeys  it  with  all  possible  speed. 
On  the  way  he  will  sometimes  reproach 
himself  because  he  may  be  going  on  a 
needless  errand,  and  he  will  be  abashed  on 
the  door-step  because  he  has  no  excuse  for 
calling.  He  needs  none,  as  it  appears,  for 
he  discovers  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  that 
he  is  needed  in  that  house,  and  that  his 
arrival  is  considered  a  providence.  It  is 
really  something  higher  and  finer  —  a 
guidance  of  the  Chief  Shepherd  by  the  in- 
ward light  of  His  Spirit.  The  pastor  is 
convinced  that  if  he  had  been  more  sensi- 
tive to  the  Divine  touch,  and  more  watch- 
ful   for   the    Divine  lead,   he   might  have 

cared  for  the  sheep  w^ith  surer  timeliness, 
231 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

and  he  remembers  with  regret  many  in- 
stances when  Jesus  called  and  he  did  not 
answer. 

[Telepathy  is  not  a  dream  nor  an  im- 
posture ;  it  is  a  fact  within  the  Body  of 
Christ,  whose  members  suffer  one  with 
another,  through  the  Risen  Head,  Who 
suffers  with  us  all.] 

There  is  one  occasion  when  the  pastor 
never  hesitates  nor  delays.  As  soon  as 
the  message  comes  from  the  house  of  sick- 
ness he  leaves  his  bed  or  his  book,  or  his 
food  or  his  friends,  and  loses  no  time  on 
the  way.  It  is  possible  that  the  summons 
may  be  needless  or  exaggerated  ;  but  it 
may  not  be,  and  he  prefers  to  err  oti  the 
safe  side  in  the  critical  affairs  of  the  soul. 
Even  although  he  may  be  preparing  his 
sermon,  and  be  writing  the  sentence  on 
which  the  whole  argument  pivots,  he  will 
lay  down  his  pen  between  the  noun  and 
the  verb.      For  the   sermon  can  wait,  but 

it  may  be  this  person  cannot. 
232 


THE   WORK   OF   A   PASTOR 

[Ah  me  !  to  be  expected,  waited  for, 
looked  for  with  every  step  and  ring,  and 
to  come  too  late  !] 

On  the  way  the  pastor  recalls  all  he 
knows  of  this  person,  if  he  be  of  his  flock, 
and  arranges  how  he  will  declare  Christ  to 
him  ;  for  this  must  be  his  message.  He 
hath  a  scripture  in  readiness  to  give  to  the 
sick,  a  short,  simple,  tender  word  ;  and  it 
is  at  such  times  that  familiar  passages 
revive  and  blossom  as  if  it  were  spring 
with  them. 

[Twice  does  a  minister  learn  beyond  all 
question  that  the  Bible  contains  the  word 
of  the  Living  God — once  w^hen  he  preach- 
es the  forgiveness  of  sins  to  the  penitent, 
once  when  he  sees  a  soul  in  the  great 
straits  of  life  lifted,  comforted,  and  filled 
with  peace  and  joy.] 

If  he  ask  the  sick  what  scripture  they 
desire,  it  is  only  a  form,  for  there  is  one 
chapter   which    every    man    and   woman 

want  to  hear  in  great  sorrow,  or  when  the 

233 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

shadow  is  falling.  The  leaf  which  con- 
tains the  fourteenth  of  St.  John's  Gospel 
should  be  made  moveable  in  our  Bibles, 
in  order  that  it  might  be  replaced  every 
ten  years.  By  the  time  a  man  has  got  to 
middle  age  that  leaf  is  thinning,  and  by 
old  age  it  is  only  a  brown  film  that  is 
barely  legible,  and  must  be  gently  handled. 
Yet  with  every  reading — say  six  times  a 
week — the  pastor  notices  that  it  yields 
some  new  revelation  of  the  Divine  Love 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  If  one  is 
sinking  into  unconsciousness,  and  you 
read,  '  In  My  Father's  house  are  many 
mansions,'  he  will  come  back  and  whisper 
'  mansions,'  and  he  will  wait  till  you  finish  : 
*  where  I  am  ye  may  be  also,'  before  he 
dies  in  peace. 

[It  is  said  that  there  are  ministers  of 
Christ  who  will  not  attend  infectious 
cases,  or  will  clutch  eagerly  at  means  of 
escape.      If  this  be  true — let  us  hope  that 

it  is  a   slander — the   miscreant  should  be 

234 


THE   WORK    OF   A   PASTOR 

deposed   without   delay   from    the   minis- 
try.] 

The  pastor  gives  much  of  his  time  to 
co7isultation,  and  it  is  likely  that  he  will 
have  to  give  more  every  year.  It  is  the 
custom  of  Protestants  to  denounce  the 
confessional,  and  not  without  reason — for 
the  claim  of  a  priest  to  hear  confessions 
and  absolve  is  a  profane  interference  be- 
tween the  soul  and  Christ, — but  it  would 
be  wise  to  remember  that  there  are  times 
and  moods  and  circumstances  when  every 
person  desires  to  open  his  heart  to  some 
brother-man,  when  some  persons  cannot 
otherwise  get  relief.  To  whom  are  these 
persons  to  go  ?  What  they  want  is  one 
who  has  a  wide  experience  of  life,  who  is 
versed  in  human  nature,  who  is  accus- 
tomed to  keep  secrets,  who  has  faith  in 
God  and  man,  whose  office  invites  and 
sanctions  confidence.  Who  fulfils  those 
conditions  so  perfectly  as  the  minister  of 

Christ  ?  and  is  it  not  good  that  there  is 

235 


\/ 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

within  reach  one  ordained  to  be  a  friend 
unto  every  one  who  is  lonely  and  in  dis- 
tress of  mind  ? 

The  following  are  the  laws  of  consulta- 
tion : 

(a)  That  the  pastor  shall  not  press  for 
any  confidences,  but  shall  receive  only 
such  as  are  freely  offered  for  the  relief  of 
the  person. 

[Anything  like  prying  into  people's  pri- 
vate affairs  and  pursuing  a  clue  to  the  end 
is  most  detestable.  The  pastor  must  be 
thoroughly  cleansed  from  curiosity  and 
meddlesomeness.] 

(b)  That  the  pastor  shall  urge  the  per- 
son to  reveal  nothing  more  of  any  painful 
secret  than  may  be  necessary  to  enable 
him  to  give  his  advice. 

[If  a  woman  states  that  she  has  a  heavy 

sin  on  her  conscience,  and  indicates  that  her 

husband  has  no  idea  of   it,  then  the  pastor 

suggests    that    they  should    speak  of   the 

matter  in  general  terms,  and,  if  he  knows 
236 


THE    WORK    OF   A    PASTOR 

the  goodness  of  her  husband,  that  she 
ought  to  confess  the  sin,  whatever  it  may 
be,  to  him.  Afterwards  the  pastor  advises 
her  how  to  meet  and  overcome  this  sin 
if  it  should  arise  again,  and  so  this  human 
soul  has  not  been  put  to  shame,  but  has 
gained  help  without  losing  self-respect] 

(c)  That  the  pastor,  although  he  has 
taken  no  oath  of  secrecy,  regards  every 
confidence  as  absolutely  sacred,  and  will 
on  no  account,  except  at  the  command  of 
the  law,  reveal  what  has  been  told  him  in 
consultation. 

[Whosoever  holds  the  pastoral  office 
must  learn  to  keep  secrets,  and  must  be  on 
his  guard  against  careless  speech.  What 
he  has  to  fear  is  not  dishonour  through 
wilful  breach  of  trust,  but  mere  leakiness. 
The  pastor  does  not  consider  his  own  wife 
a  privileged  person  in  this  matter,  for 
though  she  might  be  the  most  prudent 
and  reticent  of  women,  yet  it  would  em- 
barrass his  people  to  know  that  their 
237 


J 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

secrets  were  shared  with  her.  The  high 
honour  of  doctors,  who  carry  in  their 
breasts  so  many  social  tragedies,  is  an  ex- 
ample to  be  followed  by  the  clerical  pro- 
fession.] 

(^)  That  the  pastor  will  give  such 
practical  advice  as  he  can,  especially  urg- 
ing restitution,  reformation,  watchfulness, 
as  the  case  may  require. 

[As  he  grows  older  he  will  know  many 
precedents,  and  be  furnished  with  many 
aids  for  emergencies.] 

{e)  That  the  pastor  will  not  fail,  so  far 
as  he  may  be  able,  to  lead  every  person 
who  consults  him  to  accept  Christ  as 
his  Saviour  and  Friend,  so  that  all  the 
straits  of  life,  its  sins,  sorrows,  disasters, 
may  compel  the  soul  to  the  faith  of 
Christ. 

What  costs  the  pastor  much  more  anxi- 
ety is  the  diagnosis  and  treatment  of  spir- 
;  itual  diseases,  and  here  he  has  to  be  most 

careful.      He    distinguishes    between     an 

238 


THE   WORK   OF    A    PASTOR 

honest  sceptic,  whose  face  is  toward  the 
light,  and  who  longs  to  believe,  from  one 
whose  back  is  wilfully  turned  on  Christ, 
and  who  is  filled  with  intellectual  pride  : 
a  merchant  whose  satisfaction  comes  from 
far-seeing  and  masterly  strokes  in  business, 
and  whose  attitude  is  that  of  a  soldier 
with  his  tactics,  and  another  whose  whole 
interest  is  accumulating  wealth,  and  whose 
heart  is  woi  Id-eaten  :  a  young  man  of 
rich,  strong  nature  who  is  fighting  the 
flesh  with  all  his  might,  and  another  who 
is  feeding  his  imagination  with  evil  books, 
and  preparing  for  the  sin  into  which  he 
falls  :  one  woman  full  of  genuine  emo- 
tion, which  has  to  be  guided  in  the  ser- 
vice of  Christ,  and  another  whose  studied 
sentiment,  like  the  soft  beauty  of  a  peach, 
covers  a  heart  of  stone  :  that  woman 
whose  tongue  is  a  danger  through  her 
endless  good-natured  garrulity,  this  one 
who  does  cruel  injury  by  clever  detraction 
and    calculated   slander.      If    any   one    is 

^39 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

wounded  in  his  feelings,  he  will  examine 
whether  this  arises  from  tenderness  of 
heart  or  from  mortified  pride  ;  and  if  any 
one  bear  the  criticism  of  life  unmoved  it 
is  a  question  for  him  whether  this  be  self- 
control  or  self-conceit.  Where  the  spir- 
itual health  of  a  family  is  evidently  suf- 
fering, he  finds  out  whether  the  husband 
is  deteriorating  through  contact  with  his 
wife,  or  he  be  her  despiritualising  influ- 
ence. But  he  is  never  meddlesome,  cen- 
sorious, unsympathetic.  With  every  year 
he  sees  more  of  the  temptations  of  life 
and  the  goodness  of  human  nature.  For 
the  innocent  gaiety  and  lighter  follies  of 
youth  he  has  a  vast  toleration,  for  the 
sudden  disasters  of  manhood  an  unfailing 
charity,  for  the  unredeemed  tragedies  of 
age  a  great  sorrow.  It  is  a  hard  fight  for 
every  one,  and  it  is  not  his  to  judge  or 
condemn  ;  his  it  is  to  understand,  to  help, 
to  comfort — for  these  people  are  his  chil- 
dren, his  pupils,  his  patients ;  they  are  the 
240 


THE    WORK   OF   A    PASTOR 

sheep  Christ    has    given    him,    for   whom 
Christ  died. 

One's  heart  goes  back  from  this  eager, 
restless,  ambitious  age  to  the  former  days, 
and  recalls  with  fond  recollection  the 
pastor  of  his  youth,  who  had  lived  all  his 
ministry  in  one  place,  and  was  buried 
where  he  was  ordained — who  had  baptized 
a  child,  and  admitted  her  to  the  sacrament, 
and  married  her  and  baptized  her  children 
— who  knew  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  his 
people's  character,  and  carried  family  his- 
tory for  generations  in  his  head-  -who  w^as 
ever  thinking  of  his  people,  watching  over 
them,  visiting  their  homes,  till  his  familiar 
figure  on  the  street  linked  together  the 
past  and  the  present,  and  heaven  and 
earth,  and  opened  a  treasure-house  of 
sacred  memories.  He  prayed  with  a  lad 
before  he  went  away — his  mother  could 
almost  repeat  the  words  ;  he  was  constant- 
ly inquiring  about  his  welfare,  so  binding 

him  to  his  faith  and  home  by  silken  ties  ; 
241 


THE   CURE   OF   SOULS 

he  was  in  the  house  on  the  day  of  his  re- 
turn, to  see  how  it  had  fared  with  him  in 
the  outer  world.  People  turned  to  him  as 
by  an  instinct  in  their  joys  and  sorrows; 
men  consulted  him  in  the  crises  of  life, 
and,  as  they  lay  a-dying,  committed  their 
wives  and  children  to  his  care.  He  was 
a  head  to  every  widow,  and  a  father  to 
the  orphans,  and  the  friend  of  all  low- 
ly, discouraged,  unsuccessful  souls.  Ten 
miles  away  people  did  not  know  his  name, 
but  his  own  congregation  regarded  no 
other,  and  in  the  Lord's  presence  it  was 
well  known,  it  was  often  mentioned ; 
when  he  laid  down  his  trust,  and  arrived 
on  the  other  side,  many  whom  he  had  fed 
and  guided,  and  restored  and  comforted, 
till  he  saw  them  through  the  gates,  were 
waiting  to  receive  their  shepherd-minister, 
and  as  they  stood  around  him  before  the 
Lord,  he,  of  all  men,  could  say  without 
shame,  '  Behold,  Lord,  Thine  under-shep- 

herd,  and  the  flock  Thou  didst  give  me.' 
242 


THE  PUBLIC  WORSHIP  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    PUBLIC    WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

It  is  vanity  for  Christians  to  shut  their 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  attendance  at  public 
worship  is  decreasing,  and  that  this  is  not 
a  hopeful  omen  for  religion.  Ingenious 
advocates  may  make  the  best  of  this 
tendency,  and  may  bring  forward  various 
saving  pleas — that  public  worship  is  rather 
an  example  than  a  commandment  of  Holy 
Scripture  ;  that  God  is  not  confined  to 
any  house  made  with  hands,  and  can  be 
found  as  surely  in  the  green  fields,  or  in  a 
good  book,  as  in  an  ecclesiastical  build- 
ing ;  that  some  of  the  worst  people  are 
conspicuous  by  their  presence,  and  some 
of  the  best  by  their  absence  ;  and  that  the 

dreariness  of  service,  as  well  as  the  stupid- 

245 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

ity  of  many  sermons,  is  fitted  to  dull 
rather  than  quicken  the  religious  spirit. 
When  this  clever  person  is  in  a  lighter 
mood,  he  allows  himself  to  make  play 
with  the  conventionalities  and  eccentrici- 
ties of  public  worship,  but  when  he  rises 
to  his  height,  he  speaks  with  tears  in  his 
eyes  of  a  certain  sunset  which  you  are 
assured  has  done  more  for  his  soul  than 
all  the  sermons  he  ever  heard. 

One  may  frankly  grant  the  force  of  any 
one  of  those  arguments,  and  at  the  same 
time  remind  our  friend,  what  he  knows 
very  well,  and  every  other  person,  that  he 
has  not  gone  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
Granted  that  some  people  go  to  church  to 
whom  worship  must  be  a  vain  show,  and 
that  others  remain  at  home  to  whom  it  is 
a  spiritual  reality,  it  were  quite  absurd  to 
divide  people  into  public  worshippers  who 
are  professional  hypocrites,  and  private 
worshippers    who   are    unattached    saints. 

As  a  bare  matter  of  fact,  believing  people 

246 


THE    PUBLIC    WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

do,  as  a  rule,  go  to  church,  and  unbeliev- 
ing people,  as  a  rule,  do  not :  and  in  order 
to  show  that  one  is  not  using  faith  in  a 
dogmatic  but  a  vigorous  sense,  it  may  be 
sufficient  to  point  out  that  on  the  Church 
— her  teaching,  her  influence,  her  example 
— the  whole  system  of  charity  and  philan- 
thropy depends  in  the  Western  world. 

The  contrast  is  not  between  those 
who  worship  in  churches  and  those  who 
worship  at  home,  but  between  those 
whose  faith  in  the  Risen  Christ  is  so  real 
and  strong  that  it  draws  men  together  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week  to  celebrate  His 
resurrection,  by  which  He  has  become  the 
Living  Way  unto  the  Father,  and  those  to 
whom  this  chief  event  in  human  history 
is  a  fond  imagination,  and  whose  idea  of 
God  is  so  vague  and  impersonal,  that  they 
can  find  Him  in  the  running  of  a  stream 
as  surely  as  in  the  face  of  Christ. 

Various  reasons  of  secondary  impor- 
tance may  of  course  be  given  for  the 
247 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

decay  of  this  great  function  of  faith,  and 
they  ought  to  receive  serious  consideration 
at  the  hands  of  the  rulers  of  Christ's 
Church.  Perhaps  the  austere  conception 
of  God  as  Sovereign  and  Judge,  which 
held  the  souls  of  our  fathers  in  an  irre- 
sistible grip,  has  been  replaced  by  a  too 
easy  and  familiar  attitude  of  thought. 
Where  there  is  no  awe  there  will  be  little 
worship.  With  this  weakening  of  the 
Divine  fear  has  come,  as  a  natural  con- 
sequence, a  relaxation  of  parental  author- 
ity, and  congregations  are  thinner  to-day 
because,  while  in  the  past  a  father  took 
order  that  all  his  children  of  convenient 
age  should  be  with  him  in  the  family  pew, 
children  now  attend  church,  or  not,  as 
they  please, — the  likes  or  dislikes  of  ten- 
year-olds  about  preachers  and  sermons 
being  seriously  considered. 

[The  father  is  God's  viceroy,  but  if  God 
has  ceased  to  have  authority,  a  father  can 

hardly  be  expected  to  rule.] 
248 


THE   PUBLIC  WORSHIP   OF   GOD 

It  is  also  more  than  likely  that  the  mul- 
tiplication of  religious  work  and  of  pecu- 
liar services,  with  strange  ways  and  sensa- 
tional attractions,  compete  with  public 
worship  ;  and  it  is  a  grave  question 
whether  bizarre  services,  each  one  of 
which  is  vaunted  in  turn  as  a  new  attrac- 
tion to  religion,  are  not  a  depreciation  of 
the  Church  of  Christ.  When  each  one  of 
those  causes  has  been  credited  with  its 
own  drain,  it  remains  that  worship  rises 
or  falls  as  men  believe  or  disbelieve  in  the 
unseen,  and  that  the  Church  must  give 
her  strength  to  make  her  worship  a  mag- 
nificent and  convincing  testimony  that 
Jesus  did  rise  from  the  dead  the  third  day 
according  to  the  Scriptures. 

Public  worship  is  a  demonstration  of 
the  first  order,  and  serves  the  most  practi- 
cal ends.  If  one  believes  in  a  historic 
event,  such  as  the  achievement  of  national 
independence,   or   desires    to    see   a  great 

measure    carried,  such  as  the  freedom  of 
249 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

the  slave,  he  joins  with  others  of  a  like 
mind  ;  they  organise  a  procession,  with 
music  and  banners  ;  they  hold  a  mass 
meeting,  with  fiery  speeches  and  stirring 
resolutions.  '  What  folly ! '  says  some 
high  and  mighty  person  ;  '  what  good  is 
there  in  this  marching  and  oratory  ?  '  He 
is  not  only  cynical,  he  is  superficial.  Has 
he  never  heard  the  tramp  of  many  feet, 
and  wanted  to  keep  step  ?  has  he  never 
been  in  a  big  fliood  of  human  life  and  been 
carried  away  7  Deny  a  people  the  right 
of  public  meeting,  and  you  have  quenched 
the  .fires  of  enthusiasm  and  almost  killed 
the  hope  of  progress.  Isolation  and  lone- 
liness are  the  nursery  of  depression  and 
pessimism  ;  with  the  multitude  are  joy 
and  strength.  Faith  is  an  inherent  faculty 
of  the  soul,  and  is  not  independent  of  the 
laws  which  regulate  human  nature.  For  a 
week  a  man  has  been  living  in  an  atmos- 
phere  of   sense,  seeing  and  touching  till 

the  unseen  fades  into  a  dream.     Is  there 

250 


THE   PUBLIC    WORSHIP   OF   GOD 

a  world  behind  this  painted  curtain,  or 
does  it  cover  the  wall  of  our  tomb  ?  Are 
the  last  chapters  of  the  Gospels  only  a 
pious  invention,  the  afterglow  of  a  sun 
that  has  sunk  in  night  ?  Is  the  Christian 
creed,  with  its  hope  of  everlasting  life,  a 
worn-out  superstition  ?  Busy  with  many 
affairs,  and  separated  from  Christian  fel- 
lowship, the  man  finds  his  faith  fading 
and  shrivelling.  The  light  pricks  his  eye- 
lids,  and  he  awakes  on  the  first  day  of  the 
week  :  he  rises  with  gracious  remem- 
brances in  his  mind,  and  sees  a  little  com- 
pany hurrying  to  some  church  where  there 
is  an  early  tryst  between  them  and  their 
Lord,  Who  this  day  burst  the  tomb  and 
rose  a  great  while  before  dawn.  To-day 
there  is  no  traffic  on  the  streets,  and  weary 
men  are  resting  from  their  labours.  By- 
and-bye  a  bell  breaks  the  stillness,  and  is 
answered  from  a  distant  tower ;  bells  from 
every  quarter  join  in,  till  the  air  vibrates 

and  quivers  with  gladness.     Our  dispirited 
251 


THE   CURE   OF    SOULS 

friend  cannot  resist  the  invitation,  and  he 
finds  the  street  alive  with  people  marching 
along  with  firm,  composed  tread.  Within 
the  church  he  is  one  of  fifteen  hundred,  all 
gathered  in  the  name  of  Christ,  all  callmg 
Him  Lord.  The  minister  gives  out  the 
hundredth  Psalm,  and  from  nave  and 
transepts  and  galleries  pours  forth  one 
volume  of  praise: 

'All  people  that  on  earth  do  dwell, 
Sing  to  the  Lord  with  cheerful  voice.* 

Amid  the  mass  of  living,  pulsating  faith 
this  solitary  man's  fears  and  doubts  vanish, 
and  he  comes  out  into  the  sunshine, 
established  afresh  in  the  faith  of  the  Risen 
Lord,  his  life  caught  up  into  the  life  which 
is  hid  with  Christ  in  God.  It  is  a  great 
reinforcement  to  multiply  a  single  faith  by 
fifteen  hundred. 

*  He  is  not  risen,  no — 

He  lies  and  moulders  low  ; 

Christ  is  not  risen,' 
252 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

SO  the  world  says,  in  many  ways,  for  six 
days,  and  then  the  Church  gathers  together 
her  children,  and  declares  with  fuller  mean- 
ing than  Clough  intended  : 

'  In  the  great  gospel  and  true  creed 
He  is  yet  risen  indeed, 
Christ  is  yet  risen.' 

If  public  worship  is  to  feed  faith  in  her 
straits,  and  fill  the  soul  with  heavenliness, 
then  it  must  be  a  beautiful  function,  to 
which  the  minister  in  our  day  ought  to 
give  loving  study  and  attention. 

[There  are  churches  which  depreciate 
the  service,  and  churches  which  depreciate 
the  sermon,  and  both  err,  because  sermon 
and  service  are  not  rivals  but  auxiliaries, 
the  service  spiritualising  and  softening  the 
heart  for  the  message  of  God,  and  the 
Evangel  being  the  answer  to  the  praise  and 
prayer.] 

One    cannot    treat    of    the    conduct   of 

service  without  touching  on  the  compara- 

253 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

tive  advantages  of  a  liturgy  and  free 
prayer. 

[It  is  too  late  to  discuss  the  lawfulness 
of  a  prayer-book,  for  that  indeed  was  settled 
when  Jesus  was  pleased  to  give  the  dis- 
ciples the  Lord's  Prayer  :  as  the  dear  old 
Scotch  lady  said — yielding  unwillingly  to 
its  introduction  by  her  minister, — '  I  have 
no  particular  objection  to  that,'  although 
she  evidently  felt  it  a  dangerous  precedent. 
The  dislike  to  a  prayer-book  in  a  certain 
quarter  is  not  theological  :  it  is  historical. 
If  a  man  declines  to  use  a  liturgy,  and  you 
crop  his  ears  and  slit  his  nose  to  encour- 
asre  him,  human  nature  is  so  constituted 
that  he  is  apt  to  grow  more  obstinate,  and 
to  conceive  a  quite  unreasonable  prejudice 
against  the  book.] 

This  is  the  case  for  a  liturgy  such  as  the 
Prayer-book  of  the  Anglican  Church  : — 

(a)  That  a  liturgy,  whose  materials  have 
been  drawn  from  the  classical  ages  of  de- 
votional literature,  has  a  certain  stateliness 
254 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

of  thought  and  charm  of  style  which  satisfy 
the  ear  and  cHng  to  the  memory. 

(b)  That  a  liturgy,  being  instinct  with 
the  spirit  of  undivided  Christendom,  will 
lift  its  children  out  of  sectarian  and  pro- 
vincial ideas  of  religion  and  bring  them 
into  the  communion  of  the  Church 
Catholic. 

(c)  That  a  liturgy  being  framed  for  the 
use  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  not  to  express 
any  individual  mood  or  experience,  will 
embody  the  ordinary  wants  of  all  kinds 
and  conditions  of  men. 

(d)  That  a  liturgy  makes  the  worship- 
pers independent  of  the  officiating  clergy- 
man, so  that  his  faults  do  not  hinder  their 
devotions. 

(e)  That  a  liturgy,  affording  a  common 
and  uniform  means  of  worship,  serves  to 
bind  together  all  the  members  of  a  church, 
both  old  and  young,  into  one  fellowship 
and  loyalty. 

(/)  That  a  liturgy  is  especially  suitable 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

for  old  people,  because  of  its  unchanging 
form  of  words  ;  for  people  wearied  by  the 
week's  toil,  because  their  minds  are  not 
strained  following  a  prayer  through  an  un- 
known country  ;  for  young  people,  because 
their  interest  is  sustained,  and  they  have 
some  part  in  the  worship. 

(^)  That  a  liturgy  can  be  taught  to 
children  from  early  years  in  the  church, 
and  unto  their  last  days  they  will  love  and 
respond  to  the  dear  familiar  words. 

For  the  custom  of  free  prayer — where 
the  Church  does  not  supply  her  children 
with  the  means  of  common  worship,  but 
each  minister  makes  his  prayers  for  the 
occasion — this  case  may  be  put : — 

(a)  That  it  encourages  the  grace  of 
prayer  bestowed  upon  the  Church  by  the 
coming  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  Who  inter- 
cedeth  within  us,  as  Christ  intercedeth  for 
us,  in  the  heavenly  places. 

(<5)  That  free  prayer  gives  to  the  ser- 
vice a  certain  life  and  freshness  which  are 
256 


THE    PUBLIC    WORSHIP   OF    GOD 

impossible  when  the  same  form  is  used 
every  day  from  January  to  December, 
from  year  to  year,  from  century  to  cen- 
tury. 

(c)  That  with  free  prayer  it  is  possible 
to  render  thanks  for  great  mercies  which 
may  have  been  received  of  God,  to  seek 
His  help  in  sore  straits  that  have  come 
upon  us,  with  particular  and  comforting 
reference. 

(d)  That  free  prayer  allows,  in  the  ex- 
perience of  many,  a  tenderness  of  heart 
and  a  nearness  to  God  that  are  not  pos- 
sible under  any  form. 

It  is  well  to  recognise  that  the  diversity 
of  human  nature  should  have  full  play  in 
the  Church,  and  as  there  will  always  be 
different  systems  of  doctrine,  so  there 
ought  to  be  different  methods  of  worship. 
Some  minds  are  churchly,  reserved,  deli- 
cate in  their  religion  ;  they^  require  a 
liturgy,  since  the  idea  of  their  devotions 

being  led  by  one  who  could  ask  whatso- 

257 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

ever  he  pleased  for  the  congregation  would 
only  disgust  and  alienate  them.  Other 
minds  are  individualistic,  frank,  robust ; 
they  will  not  be  content  with  a  book,  but 
rejoice  in  the  thought  of  perfect  freedom 
in  prayer,  and  are  willing  on  occasion  to 
encourage  their  leader  with  sympathetic 
exclamations.  It  is  possible,  of  course, 
that  there  may  be  a  rapprochement  be- 
tween the  two  methods,  as  Churches  with 
liturgies  shorten  or  adapt  them,  and 
Churches  without  liturgies  insist  on  some 
order  of  service,  and  even  prepare  forms 
of  prayer  for  the  use  of  their  ministry. 
The  ultimate  issue  for  the  Church  in 
general  might  be  a  combination  of  liturgi- 
cal and  extemporaneous  prayer. 

One  factor  in  the  situation  must  re- 
ceive due  weight,  and  that  is  the  growth 
in  culture  within  the  half-century  and  its 
legitimate  influence  on  worship.  People 
have  more  sensitive  ears  and  a  keener  ap- 
preciation of  perfection  :  they  detect  slip- 
25S 


THE    PUBLIC    WORSHIP   OF   GOD 

shod  phrases,  and  are  offended  by  any  vul- 
garity of  thought  :  they  will  not  endure 
that  a  coarse  man  should  harangue  the 
Almighty  at  the  pitch  of  his  voice,  or  a 
weak  man  go  maundering  into  His  pres- 
ence in  their  name.  They  are  careful  as 
to  the  furnishing  of  their  homes,  as  to 
their  clothing,  as  to  their  friends,  as  to 
their  books.  They  shrink  from  what  is 
loud  and  glaring  ;  they  love  w^hat  is  dainty 
and  lovely  ;  they  appreciate  fine  shades, 
graceful  manners,  finished  style.  When 
these  people  come  into  the  House  of  God, 
and  address  themselves  to  the  highest  act 
of  life,  they  cannot  lay  aside  this  habit  of 
mind,  and  do  not  see  any  reason  why  they 
should.  They  cherish  the  belief  that  the 
service  of  the  Church  ought  to  represent 
the  very  ideal  of  thought  and  feeling  and 
language,  that  from  beginning  to  end  there 
must  not  be  one  jarring  note  in  the  spirit, 
or  one  infelicitous  expression  in  the  form. 

It    is    open   to   say  that  such   people   are 

259 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

critical,  and  that  bad  grammar  has  often 
expressed  a  full  heart.  But  they  insist 
that  they  are  simply  reverent,  and  that  bad 
grammar  does  not  express  their  heart. 
Private  worship  may  be  on  the  level 
of  each  family,  but  public  worship  must 
be  on  the  highest.  They  also  point  out 
that  the  prayers  of  the  Bible,  whether  in 
the  Psalms  or  Epistles,  are  cast  into  very 
stately  language,  and  yet  it  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  any  one  will  say  that  the 
Psalmists  or  St.  Paul  lacked  in  fervency. 
They  will  be  perfectly  satisfied  if  the 
prayers  of  the  Church,  however  composed, 
should  be  after  the  grand  style  of  Holy 
Scripture  ;  but  they  refuse,  when  they  bow 
their  souls  before  God,  to  have  for  their 
mouthpiece  a  minister  whose  ideas  and 
words  outrage  their  feeling  of  good  taste 
and  reverence.  Let  him  pray  after  this 
fashion  when  he  is  alone,  for  then  he  is 
speaking   for  himself ;  let    him,   if  better 

cannot  be  got,  preach,  for  then  he  is  speak- 

260 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP    OF   GOD 

ing  to  men,  but  it  is  not  fitting  nor  just 
that  he  should  conduct  pubHc  prayer. 
This  is  an  unanswerable  contention,  and 
cannot  be  despised. 

We  are  all  aware,  of  course,  that  in 
every  Church  there  is  a  number  of  minis- 
ters to  whom  has  been  very  richly  given 
the  spirit  of  grace  and  supplication,  and 
who  lead  the  devotions  of  God's  people 
with  tenderness  and  beauty.  Worship 
under  their  charge  combines  the  perfect 
form  of  a  liturgy  with  the  loveliness  and 
spontaneity  of  spoken  prayer.  If  the 
Church  could  furnish  every  one  of  her 
congregations  with  such  a  minister,  then 
little  could  be  said  for  a  prayer-book  ;  but 
every  one  knows  that  such  men  are  the 
elect.  We  remember  with  unfeigned 
gratitude  those  anointed  priests  who  went 
in  our  name  into  the  Holiest  of  all,  and 
who  presented  unto  God  what  was  in  our 
hearts  with   the   fragrance   of    their    piety 

upon  every  word  ;  but  we  also  remember 
261 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

how  Others,  to  whom  God  had  not  been 
pleased  to  give  such  grace,  misrepresented 
a  thousand  people  woefully,  asking  things 
we  did  not  desire,  omitting  to  ask  many 
things  we  did  desire,  and  asking  every- 
thing in  terms  we  had  never  dreamt 
of  using  to  a  local  dignitary.  Without 
question  we  have  suffered  loss,  and  it  is 
no  compensation  to  assure  us  that  the 
minister  was  a  good  man,  or  that  he 
proved  himself  a  forcible  preacher. 

When  the  Church  of  Christ  of  any 
branch  assembles  a  congregation  of  her 
people  together  for  divine  service,  and 
commits  its  conduct  to  the  absolute  dis- 
cretion of  one  man,  she  undertakes  an 
enormous  responsibility.  Has  she  not 
entered  into  a  covenant  with  those  present 
that  this  man  will  be  their  mouthpiece, 
and  that  all  the  ordinary  and  general 
wants  of  a  body  of  human  beings  will  so 
far  as   possible    be    presented    before    the 

Throne  of  Grace  ?     Suppose,  through  the 

262 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP   OF   GOD 

carelessness,  or  forgetfulness,  or  ignorance, 
or  idiosyncrasy  of  this  minister,  no  prayer 
is  offered  for  the  country  and  its  rulers,  or 
for  the  sick  and  dying,  or  for  the  sorrow- 
ful, or  for  those  in  danger  on  the  sea,  or 
for  distant  friends,  or  for  little  children, 
or  for  those  who  have  lost  the  kindly 
light  of  reason,  or  for  prodigals,  or  for  those 
who  have  secret  trials ; — suppose  there  be 
no  thanksgiving  for  the  gifts  of  Provi- 
dence, for  deliverance  from  disease,  for 
succour  to  the  soul,  for  increase  of  light, 
for  the  coming  of  Christ,  for  the  indwell- 
ing of  the  Holy  Ghost,  for  the  victory  of 
the  departed,  for  the  life  everlasting ; — 
will  there  not  be  hundreds  who  entered 
the  church  laden  with  the  weight  of  care 
or  gratitude,  and  who  hoped  to  the  end, 
but  hoped  in  vain,  for  relief  ?  Can  any 
service  where  such  petitions  and  thanks- 
givings are  absent  be  called  public  wor- 
ship? 

Where  the  Church  provides  no  liturgy, 
263 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

the  minister  must  give  great  care  to  the 
service  of  prayer,  and  there  are  certain 
faults  against  which  he  will  do  well  to 
guard.  OuQ  is  P7^eac/im£' in  prayer.  When 
the  minister  expounds  a  doctrine  of  the 
truth,  though  this  be  the  atoning  sacrifice 
of  our  Lord  ;  when  he  repeats  a  varied 
and  quite  unrelated  cento  of  texts  to  which 
the  speeches  of  Hebrew  prophets  on 
public  affairs,  and  some  of  the  most  foolish 
utterances  of  Job's  friends,  largely  con- 
tribute ;  when  he  exhorts  his  people  to 
repentance  and  faith,  or  to  some  practical 
duty  of  the  Christian  life  ;  or  when  he  con- 
founds sceptics,  and  corrects  the  errors  of 
the  day,  treating  with  much  unction  those 
points  wherein  he  conscientiously  differs 
from  his  brethren,  he  has  gravely  mis- 
taken and  misused  his  opportunity. 

Another  is  Egotism — when  the  minister 
does  not  seem  able  to  distinguish  between 
his    study    and    the    church,    or    his    own 

private  experiences  and  the  needs  of  the 

264 


THE    PUBLIC    WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

congregation,  but  gives  himself  to  the 
fervent  and  often  affecting  exposition  of 
his  own  doubts  and  fears,  and  hopes  and 
anxieties,  finally  disappearing  out  of  reach 
and  understanding  in  a  cloud  of  mystical 
language. 

['  Do  you  suppose,'  said  an  excellent 
man  of  the  subjective  school,  'that  I  am 
to  be  interrupted  to  pray  for  sailors  when 
I  am  wrestling  before  the  Mercy-seat  ?' 
His  wrestling,  however,  was  not  petitions 
for  the  people,  but  an  explanation  of  the 
state  of  his  own  soul,  and  the  sailor's 
mother  was  not  greatly  comforted  by  his 
lamentations.] 

A  third  fault  is  Slovenliness — when  a 
minister  embarks  on  the  great  affairs  of 
prayer  without  a  chart  or  compass,  know- 
ing not  w^hither  he  may  be  carried,  but 
hoping  to  arrive  somewhere  ;  when  the 
congregation  are  certain  that  he  does  not 
know    what    he    will    say  next    sentence ; 

when   he  toils  with  a  refractory  sentence 
265 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

for  a  while,  and  finally  lets  it  go  in  despair 
— hiding  his  defeat  by  a  hasty  outburst  of 
artificial  fervour,  and  when  he  drops  into 
painful  colloquialisms  which  would  not  be 
tolerated  in  the  humblest  public  address. 

[This  style  of  prayer  is  excused  on  the 
ground  of  godly  familiarity — two  words 
which  do  not  go  well  together  :  it  ought 
to  be  condemned  on  the  ground  of  un- 
godly impudence.] 

Perhaps  the  worst  offence  is  Profanity 
— when  that  man  whose  soul  ought  to  be 
most  full  of  awe,  sprinkles  his  prayer  with 
the  name  of  the  Deity,  which  is  accom- 
panied by  no  adjectives  of  adoration,  and 
is  shouted  aloud  ;  or  when  a  sinful  man 
composes  a  speech  stiff  with  embroidery  of 
rhetoric  and  figures,  and  makes  an  empty 
pretence  of  addressing  it  to  God,  w^hile  he 
is  evidently  calculating  its  effect  on  his 
audience  of  fellow-sinners ;  or  when  somiC 
thin-blooded  and  venomous  creature  abuses 

his  sacred  position  and  utilises  the  privilege 
266 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP   OF   GOD 

of  prayer  to  attack  some  person  of  his  con- 
gregation who  has  resisted  his  will  or  done 
him  some  slight  injury. 

If  any  one  desires  to  perfect  the  form 
of  his  prayers,  then  he  can  do  no  better 
than  read  from  time  to  time  the  liturgies 
of  the  Early  Church,  and  the  choice  books 
of  Christian  devotion  —  a  collection  of 
which  should  lie  handy  to  the  minister's 
hand.  There  are  moments  when  one  lays 
down  the  pen  in  weariness  or  perplexity 
of  thought,  then  let  him  take  a  draught 
from  one  of  those  ancient  wells,  and  he 
will  not  only  be  immediately  refreshed,  but 
it  will  come  to  pass  that  he  will  catch 
the  very  style  of  the  saints,  not  through 
laborious  imitation,  but  as  one  who  keeps 
high  company  acquires  the  manners  of  his 
host. 

If  one  desires  to  complete  the  substance 

of  his  prayers,  it  is  wise  to  form   a  litany 

for   himself  with  much   care    and  pains — 

collecting  all  the  ordinary  petitions  which 
267 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

occur  to  him,  or  are  suggested  by  his  ex- 
perience as  a  minister,  and  inquiring  from 
time  to  time  whether  any  one  of  his  people 
has  one  he  knew  not  of,  and  then  casting 
them  all  into  order  and  simple  tender 
words  of  devotional  speech,  adding  a  con- 
fession of  sin  and  a  general  thanksgiving. 
This  he  will  call  the  Prayer  of  Interces- 
sion, and  use  daily  without  fail  or  change, 
save  for  a  few  special  collects  which  can 
be  inserted  in  their  season,  say  for  colleges 
and  schools  at  their  re-opening,  or  for  an 
election,  or  for  a  harvest,  for  the  meeting 
of  a  Church  court,  and  such  like.  [Con- 
servative people  will  not  object  to  the  use 
of  this  form,  but  will  come  to  love  it — 
complaining  if  a  word  be  changed.] 

Worship  culminates  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Sacraments,  which  our  Lord 
gave  us  as  the  quickeners  of  the  Christian 
life,  and  which  are  the  seals  of  our  faith. 
One  is  to  be  administered  with  great  so- 
lemnity, with  a  Holy  Table  set  apart  for 
268 


THE    PUBLIC   WORSHIP    OF    GOD 

this  end,  and  guarded  from  every  other 
use,  with  pure  white  linen  on  the  pews,  in 
token  that  the  people  are  gathered  at 
Christ's  board,  with  grave  sweet  melody, 
with  minute  observance  by  the  minister  of 
every  symbolical  word  and  action  of  the 
Lord,  with  thanksgiving  for  the  Church 
triumphant,  with  supplication  for  the 
Church  militant,  in  the  hush  of  the  church 
while  the  elements  are  carried  down  the 
aisles,  and  the  silent,  awestruck  people 
pledge  themselves  anew  to  their  Lord  in 
the  mystery  of  His  Body  and  Blood. 

The  other  Sacrament  had  better  have 
a  service  unto  itself,  after  the  benediction 
in  the  morning,  for  which  parents  and 
children  could  remain,  and  the  minister 
should  make  a  little  address  on  the  mys- 
tery of  love  and  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
and  the  excellence  of  the  religious  life,  and 
on  Jesus  as  the  Good  Shepherd  of  the  soul 
and  the  Friend  of  little  children  ;  and  the 

people  should  stand  at  the  act  of  Baptism, 
269 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

and  the  choir  should  chant  'Amen' when 
the  child  is  baptized  into  the  threefold 
Name  ;  and  there  should  be  a  short  form 
of  prayer,  which  the  minister  can  com- 
pose for  himself,  with  a  thanksgiving  for 
the  gift  of  the  child  and  the  recovery  of 
the  mother,  and  a  committing  of  the 
little  one  into  Jesus'  care,  and  a  prayer  for 
grace  to  be  given  to  the  father  and  mother 
for  the  child's  upbringing,  and  a  petition 
that  the  child  heart  should  be  kept  in  all 
present  till  they  come  to  our  Father's 
House.  And  there  should  be  bright  music 
and  joyful  hymns. 

[Unto  this  service  will  frequently  re- 
main old  men  and  women  that  have  never 
been  married,  who  will  often  speak  to  the 
mother  and  lift  up  her  heart  by  praising 
the  child — lonely  souls  in  whom  the  love 
of  God  dwelleth  richly.] 

Public  worship  ought  to  be  comforting, 

joyful,  enthusiastic,  beautiful,  the  flower  of 

all  the  week,  but  its  chief  note  should  be 
270 


THE   PUBLIC  WORSHIP   OF  GOD 

reverence  and  godly  fear.  Praise  and 
prayer,  the  reading  of  Holy  Scripture,  and 
the  preaching  of  the  Evangel,  should  con- 
spire to  lift  the  congregation  above  the 
present  world  and  the  sensible  atmosphere 
in  which  they  have  been  living,  and  bring 
them  face  to  face  with  the  Eternal.  It 
was  this  tender  and  gracious  fear  which 
made  the  glory  of  Puritan  faith  and  gave 
visible  force  to  Puritan  character.  Noth- 
ing is  more  urgently  needed  in  this  day, 
which  knows  how  to  doubt  and  jest,  but 
is  forgetting  how  to  revere  and  adore, 
when  the  great  function  of  worship  has 
become  pleasing  and  amusing,  a  perform- 
ance and  a  comedy.  What  we  may  well 
pray  for  is  a  baptism  into  our  fathers'  pen- 
itent, austere,  enduring  Christian  faith, 
who  summoned  themselves  hourly  to  the 
judgment-seat  of  Christ,  and  therefore 
considered  it  a  small  thing  to  be  judged  of 
man's    judgment,   who    never  met  in  the 

Great  Name,  whether  in  stately  cathedral 

271 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

or  bare  hillside,  but  they  came  to  the 
spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect,  and  to 
Jesus,  the  Mediator  of  the  new  covenant, 
and  to  God,  the  Judge  of  all. 


272 


THE    MINISTER'S  CARE   OF 
HIMSELF 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    minister's    CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

As  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  the  Church 
should  be  fed  and  guarded  by  a  human 
ministry,  there  is  no  man  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  who  has  such  responsibility,  and 
who  ought  to  take  such  care  of  himself, 
as  the  minister  of  Christ.  And  first  he 
must  see  to  his  health,  for  the  spiritual 
prosperity  of  a  congregation  depends  very 
largely  on  the  minister  being  not  only 
sound  in  doctrine  but  also  sound  in  body. 
It  is  not  merely  that  a  valetudinarian  is  a 
source  of  endless  anxiety  to  kind-hearted 
people  who  have  enough  concern  in  their 
own  homes  without  the  burden  of  the 
minister's  weakness,  and  that  the  work  is 

certain  to  be  crippled  with  a  leader  that  is 

275 


THE    CURE   OF   SOULS 

afraid  of  breaking  down,  but,  what  is  much 
more  unfortunate  and  injurious,  the  in- 
validism of  his  body  will  certainly  creep 
into  his  teaching,  for,  as  a  rule,  one  can 
only  get  robust  sermons  from  a  robust 
man. 

One  ought  indeed  to  be  thankful  that 
Christ  chose  as  His  first  apostles  men  not 
only  of  conspicuous  spiritual  genius,  but 
also  of  a  hardy,  natural,  wholesome  habit 
of  life — fishermen,  and  such  like, — and 
that  of  the  four  Gospels  that  must  remain 
for  ever  the  authoritative  documents  of  our 
faith,  three  proceeded,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, from  those  weatherbeaten  Galileans, 
and  the  fourth  from  a  physician.  What- 
ever may  be  said  of  later  Christian  litera- 
ture, there  is  nothing  sickly,  unreal, 
mawkish,  or  gloomy  in  the  Gospels.  They 
are  sober,  sensible,  downright,  manly 
books,  such  as  able-bodied  men  would 
write  and  real   men  like    to    read.     The 

body  is  a  factor  in  thinking,  as  well  as  in 
276 


THE    MINISTER'S   CARE   OF    HIMSELF 

pulling  ropes  and  forging  iron.  Suppose 
two  men  be  both  saints,  you  need  not  ex- 
pect equally  good  stuff  from  each  in  the 
way  of  thought  if  one  be  sound  in  body 
and  the  other  unsound.  As  a  rule,  any 
one  who  has  inherited  an  inferior  constitu- 
tion, or  whose  nervous  system  is  over- 
wrought, or  whose  body  is  deformed,  or 
who  is  a  chronic  dyspeptic,  or  who  is  in 
any  way  below  the  working  average  of 
strength,  will  be  peevish  in  temper,  in- 
clined to  useless  argument,  fiercely  intoler- 
ant of  other  people's  views,  a  slave  to 
crotchets,  and  pessimistic  in  the  extreme. 
It  is  his  misfortune,  and  allowance  ought 
to  be  made  for  it.  He  may  live  above  it, 
but  the  chances  are  he  will  not.  One 
ought  to  extend  to  him  every  considera- 
tion, as  to  a  crippled  man,  but  it  is  wise  to 
make  some  discount  from  his  opinions. 
Unless  he  be  singularly  assisted  by  the 
grace  of  God,  as  certain   like  Pascal  and 

Baxter  evidently  were,  they  will   be  less 
277 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

than  true  :  he  is  sub-normal,  and  his  views 
are  apt  to  be  sub-normal  too — deficient  in 
balance,  sobriety,  charity.  When  a  min- 
ister is  untouched  in  wind,  sturdy  in  limb, 
clean  in  blood,  you  have  a  certain  guarantee 
of  bright,  honest,  manly  thinking.  He  is 
not  likely  to  be  falsetto,  hysterical,  garru- 
lous, simply  because  he  is  sound  in  body 
as  well  as  in  mind. 

[It  is,  however,  possible  to  be  exasper- 
atingly  healthy,  and  one  can  understand 
a  much  tried  woman  being  driven  away 
from  a  minister  whose  radiant  unlined 
face  showed  that  he  had  never  known  pain, 
and  who  had  married  a  rich  wife,  and 
taking  refuge  in  a  church  whose  minister 
had  a  liver  and  preached  rampant  Calvin- 
ism. '  Was  yon  a  man  ' — so  she  put  it — 
'  for  a  widow  with  seven  children  to  sit 
under?'  Invalid  ministers  have  a  certain 
use  and  do  gather  sympathetic  congrega- 
tions —  becoming    a    kind    of    infirmary 

chaplains.      But    their    ecclesiastical    and 

278 


THE    MINISTER'S   CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

theological  views  must  be  taken  with  great 
caution.] 

It  is  not  extravagance  to  say  that  the 
physical  health  of  theologians  has  affect- 
ed the  religious  character  of  nations. 
No  one  can  estimate  how  much  Germany 
has  gained  from  Luther's  genial  and 
robust  nature,  or  Scotland  lost  through 
Calvin  being  a  chronic  invalid  and  Knox 
bemg  a  broken  man.  During  long  cen- 
turies it  was  the  custom  of  Christendom 
for  a  baron  to  send  his  able-bodied  sons 
to  the  field  and  any  deformed  or  sickly 
lad  to  the  Church.  Was  it  wonderful 
that  theology  and  religion  got  out  of 
touch  with  life,  and  became  fantastic  and 
unreasonable  ?  Human  life  has  now 
more  doors  for  the  infirm,  and  the  Chris- 
tian Church  has  ceased  to  be  a  home  for 
incurables,  but  it  is  not  as  a  rule  the 
strong,  stirring,  full-blooded  boys  of  a 
family  who  enter  the  ministry,  but  the  lad 

who  is   half-alive,    who    plays   no  games, 
279 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

who  is  painfully  composed.  This  is  a  pub- 
lic misfortune,  since,  if  any  other  man  be 
out  of  sorts,  his  wife  suffers,  but  if  a  min- 
ister be  below  par  a  thousand  people  have 
a  less  successful  life  for  a  week.  His 
business  is  to  put  heart  in  them  for  six 
days'  work  and  trial,  but  for  that  enter- 
prise a  man's  pulse  must  beat  high  and 
his  own  heart  be  buoyant.  If  his  diges- 
tion be  bad,  then  he  goes  into  the  pulpit 
and  hits  viciously  at  some  heresy  or 
mourns  the  decay  of  morals.  The  people, 
who  have  been  expecting  a  glimpse  of 
heaven,  go  home  in  despair.  The  saints 
lament  the  degeneracy  of  the  times,  and 
the  young  people  resolve  that  they  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  religion.  But 
the  times  are  really  the  best  we  have 
ever  seen,  and  religion  is  the  strength  of 
the  human  soul.  The  trouble  is  in  this 
case  neither  in  the  Bible  nor  the  world, 
but  in    the    pulpit,    which    that    day    was 

filled    by    a    hypochondriac    or    a    melan- 
280 


THE    MINISTER'S   CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

choliac.  Every  church  should  have  a 
physical  examination  at  the  entrance  to 
the  theological  college  and  only  admit 
those  men  who  would  have  passed  as 
first-class  lives  with  an  insurance  company. 
And  the  working  minister  should  have 
his  own  rules  of  health — to  have  his  study 
re-charged  with  oxygen  every  hour,  to 
sleep  with  his  bedroom  window  open, 
to  walk  four  miles  a  day,  to  play  an  out- 
door game  once  a  week,  to  have  six 
weeks'  holiday  a  year  and  once  in  seven 
years  three  months — all  that  his  thought 
and  teaching  may  be  oxygenated  and  the 
fresh  air  of  Christianity  fill  the  souls  of  his 
people. 

He  must  also  guard  and  husband  his 
time  with  unrelenting  jealous  resolution  ; 
for  if  he  fail  to  do  so  in  this  day,  his  work 
will  dwindle  down  into  a  mere  round  of 
religious  and  secular  trifles. 

Imagine  the  contrast  between  the 
student 's    ideal  of    the    ministry    and    its 


THE   CURE    OF    SOULS 

actual  practice.  It  may  not  be  given 
to  every  man  to  hear  that  sudden  and 
irresistible  voice  that  came  to  St.  Francis 
when  he  left  the  supper-table,  and,  stand- 
ing below  the  blue  of  the  Umbrian  sky, 
knew  he  was  called  of  God  to  abandon 
all  for  Christ's  dear  sake  ;  but  within  the 
heart  of  every  true  man  the  intention 
of  the  holy  ministry  is  associated  with 
romantic  dreams  and  hopes.  He  does  not 
expect  a  material  reward,  and  he  is  pre- 
pared for  hard  work.  He  is  willing  to 
brave  opposition  and .  reproach  to  fulfil 
God's  will ;  every  sacrifice  will  have  its 
compensation  in  those  moments  of  rever- 
ent study  when  his  heart  suddenly  burns 
within  him  and  he  knows  Christ's  pres- 
ence is  in  the  room,  in  hours  when  he 
can  see  the  soul  of  his  hearers  leap  into 
their  faces  in  response  to  the  Evangel, 
in  days  spent  in  carrying  the  Lord's  con- 
solation to  the  afflicted.  Pardon  his  illu- 
sions ;  he  is  still  young  and  ingenuous ; 
282 


THE    MINISTER'S    CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

the  student  sees  himself  the  prophet  of 
God's  truth,  the  shepherd  of  human  souls. 
Lay  down  this  poem,  and  take  his  diary, 
ten  years  later,  when  he  is  the  minister  of  a 
city  charge,  and,  so  far  as  opportunity  goes, 
has  come  to  the  height  of  his  ministry. 

Monday,  the  minister,  exhausted  by 
Sunday's  work,  faces  a  pile  of  letters  that 
has  accumulated  in  the  end  of  the  week, 
with  disgust  and  rebellion.  They  are  on 
all  kinds  of  subjects,  from  a  schedule  is- 
sued by  some  committee  voracious  of 
statistics  to  a  note  of  charming  irrelevancy 
from  a  lady  about  a  cook  that  had  once 
been  in  his  congregation.  Two  hours  of 
clerk's  work  for  at  least  five  days  a  week 
was  not  a  part  of  his  original  programme, 
and  it  is  that  item  which  whitens  men's 
hair.  His  note-book  shows  that  an  Ec- 
clesiastical Court  meets  in  the  afternoon, 
and  after  a  battle  with  his  lower  self, 
which  leans  to  golf,  he  attends,  in  all  the 

glow  of  moral  victory,  to  find  its  members 

283 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

engaged  in  persuading  some  poor  congre- 
gation to  give  an  extra  five  pounds  to 
some  fund,  and  afterwards  throwing  them- 
selves into  the  discussion  of  a  point  of 
order  with  unaffected  delight.  In  the 
evening  he  is  due  at  a  meeting  which  has 
now  risen  from  a  soiree  to  a  conversazione, 
and  is  just  bordering  on  a  reception, 
where,  finding  six  other  neighbours,  he 
contents  himself  with  explaining  the  inter- 
esting circumstances  in  which  he  first  met 
their  esteemed  pastor  at  a  hydropathic. 

Tuesday  morning  he  spends  at  the  local 
School  Board,  trying  to  discover  under 
the  rules  how  much  an  ex-pupil-teacher 
ought  to  get  as  an  assistant  mistress, 
and  w^hether  a  charge  of  2S.  6d.  ex- 
pended by  the  caretaker  on  his  coal-cellar 
can  be  charged  against  the  rates.  He 
does  visit  one  or  two  sick  that  day, 
but  is  hampered  by  an  afternoon  tea, 
where  he  meets  seven  ladies,  whose  hus- 
bands, being  business  men,  were  not  ex- 
284 


THE    MINISTER'S    CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

pected  to  come.  In  the  evening  he  pre- 
sides at  the  Young  Men's  Society,  which 
can  only  be  kept  up  by  his,  watchful  pres- 
ence, and  hears  a  paper  on  Julius  Caesar, 
on  which  he  offers  remarks  hurriedly  eath- 
ered  from  an  encyclopaedia,  but  suggestive 
of  omniscience. 

Wednesday  morning  is  occupied  in 
drawing  up  a  report  on  the  debt  of  a 
church  for  a  board,  and  at  three  o'clock 
he  moves  a  resolution  at  the  annual  meet- 
ing of  the  Society  for  the  Reformation  of 
Tramway  Boys.  He  counts  himself  for- 
tunate in  saving  two  hours  for  the  prepa- 
ration of  his  address  for  the  mid-week  ser- 
vice. 

Thursday  opens  well,  and  the  minister 
begins  to  work  for  Sunday,  when  a  visitor 
comes,  and  then  a  crowd — a  young  lady 
w^ho  is  anxious  to  be  a  nurse  ;  a  young 
man  (who  was  once  at  the  young  men's 
sermon)  to  get  a  testimonial  for  a  situa- 
tion ;  a  member  of  the  church  with  no 
285 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

business,  who  wished  to  introduce  a  coun- 
try friend  ;  the  travelling  secretary  of  some 
third-rate  society,  whose  time  is  paid  ;  an 
elderly  person  who  got  good  from  one  of 
the  minister's  sermons  in  a  strange  church, 
and  borrows  five  shillings.  In  the  even- 
ing he  takes  the  chair  at  the  deacons' 
meeting,  where  the  main  features  are  the 
church  officer's  salary,  and  a  draught  which 
is  the  alleged  reason  of  the  irregular  at- 
tendance of  two  families. 

On  Friday  that  good  angel,  the  minis- 
ter's wife,  comes  to  the  rescue,  and  gives 
strict  orders  that  no  one  shall  be  admitted. 
The  outside  world  struggles  on  without 
apparent  disaster,  and  the  minister  has  the 
luxury  of  four  hours'  consecutive  thought. 
If  he  had  many  forenoons  like  this  he 
might  become  a  preacher.  He  is,  indeed, 
so  intoxicated  with  study  that  he  proposes 
to  have  a  long  evening  with  his  books, 
when  he  recollects  an  engagement  to 
meet  the  workers  at  Bethesda — a  mission 

286 


THE    MINISTER'S   CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

hall  on  unsectarian  principles,  which  a 
member  of  his  own  church  supports  at  the 
cost  of  ^200  a  year,  and  where  he  preaches 
to  a  select  audience  of  seventy  children 
and  thirty  adult  pensioners.  The  minis- 
ter wishes  for  the  moment  that  he  had  re- 
fused to  have  anything  to  do  with  this 
mistaken  form  of  Christian  enterprise,  and 
persuaded  the  good  man  to  have  aided  a 
poor  church  with  his  liberality ;  but  the 
minister  has  not  more  moral  courage  than 
other  people,  and  he  was  afraid  of  being 
called  unevangelical  instead  of  sensible. 
But  Sahirday  I  This  will  make  up  for 
all.  Alas  !  his  wife  goes  off  guard,  and  a 
picturesque  foreigner  from  the  East  takes 
possession  of  the  study.  The  minister, 
courteous  as  one  ought  to  be  to  distant 
strangers,  lays  himself  out  to  extricate  the 
visitors  meaning,  and  after  an  hour's 
patient  exploration  discovers  that  his 
caller    comes    from    an    unknown    place, 

that  he  represents  himself,  that  he  wishes 

287 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

to  build  something,  that  he  is  determined 
to  preach  in  the  minister's  church  to- 
morrow for  a  collection.  When  the  man 
from  Mesopotamia  has  been  induced  to 
depart,  it  is  in  vain  to  take  up  the  sermon 
till  evening.  So  far  as  I  know,  these  de- 
tails are  not  exaggerated,  and  they  are 
given  at  length  for  a  serious  purpose.  It 
is  not  to  suggest  that  Christ's  minister 
should  hold  himself  aloof  from  the  great 
charities  or  social  causes  which  are  the 
glory  of  national  life,  or  be  indifferent  to 
the  extension  of  God's  kingdom  or  the 
work  of  foreign  churches.  No  man  is 
wearied  or  harassed  by  an  enterprise  of 
the  first  order.  He  is  done  to  death  by 
petty  details,  by  useless  talk,  by  religious 
faddists,  by  unnecessary  correspondence. 
Why  should  a  minister  be  concussed  into 
the  service  of  all  kinds  of  trumpery  soci- 
eties ?  Has  not  the  full  time  come  when 
he  ought  to  be  released  from  the  burden 

of   financial    affairs,    whether    building   a 

288 


THE   MINISTER'S   CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

church  or  assisting  a  dozen  business  men 
to  administer  a  few  hundred  pounds  ? 
Is  it  necessary  that  the  minister  should 
be  present  at  every  church  committee  ? 
Is  there  to  be  no  finahty  in  church  or- 
ganisation? Is  the  minister  to  be  more 
and  more  dragged  away  from  his  chief 
work  into  every  new  scheme  of  social  ref- 
ormation ?  The  ministry  will  have  to 
take  a  stand  and  put  it  to  their  people 
whether  they  desire  preachers  or  general 
agents,  for  if  a  man  is  to  be  in  any  degree 
a  prophet  he  must  not  be  driven  along 
the  dusty  highways  of  life  from  Monday 
till  Saturday,  but  must  be  allowed  days 
of  absolute  quiet  wherein  the  thoughts 
of  God  may  arise  and  take  shape  in  his 
soul. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  the  minis- 
ter manage  his  affairs  with  discretion,  for 
in  his  case  it  will  not  be  possible  to 
separate  his   private   from   his  public  life. 

The  question  of  voluntary  celibacy  is  one 

289 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

he  ought  to  face  before  his  ordination  and 
settle  his  duty  by  his  calHng  of  God.  An 
unmarried  man  can  give  himself  without 
reserve  to  the  work  of  the  Evangel  amid 
the  dangers  of  heathen  lands  or  the  squalor 
of  our  great  cities  :  he  is  free  from  worldly 
cares  and  social  entanglements :  he  re- 
quires little  from  the  Church  and  he  is  at 
her  absolute  disposal.  If  a  man  decide 
that  it  is  God's  will  he  should  marry,  then 
of  all  men  he  ought  to  be  most  care- 
ful in  the  choice  of  his  wife,  for  she  may 
be  either  a  help  or  a  hindrance  not  merely 
to  his  comfort  but  to  his  work.  [One 
does  not  mean  that  a  minister  had  better 
marry  a  woman  who  can  preach  or  con- 
duct meetings,  in  order  that  he  may  divide 
his  duties  with  her,  any  more  than  one 
would  advise  a  doctor  to  marry  a  nurse  to 
assist  him  with  his  cases.  Every  self- 
respecting  man  does  his  own  work,  and 
refuses  to  throw  any  of  its  burden   on  his 

wife.     Those  stories  of  ministers  who  read 
290 


THE    MINISTERS    CARE    OF  HIMSELF 

their  sermons  to  their  wives  before  they 
are  preached — so  depriving  the  poor  wom- 
an of  any  edification  on  Sunday  or  doub- 
ling her  trial — and  afflict  her  with  all  the 
little  worries  of  his  work,  are  wicked  in- 
ventions. A  minister  is  quite  as  manly  as 
a  doctor  or  lawyer,  and  knows  that  his 
wife  has  enough  to  do  in  her  own  depart- 
ment] It  is  not  the  speaker  who  really 
fulfils  the  wife's  part,  nor  the  quiet  woman 
who  fails  by  the  minister's  side.  She  is  a 
good  wife  who  manages  his  house  with 
skill  and  economy,  so  that  he  has  to  give 
no  thought  to  domestic  affairs,  who  brings 
up  her  children  in  the  Divine  Love,  whose 
father  has  so  little  time  for  their  over- 
sight, who  carries  herself  so  wisely  and 
kindly  among  his  people  that  none  are 
offended — for  they  have  a  sense  of  proper- 
ty in  her  too  which  is  very  pleasant  :  who 
advises  her  Jiusband  on  every  important 
matter  and  often  restrains  him  from  hasty 

speech  ;  and  who  receives  him  weary,  dis- 
291 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

couraged,  irritable,  and  sends  him  out 
again  strong,  hopeful,  sweet-tempered. 
The  woman  is  in  the  shadow  and  the  man 
stands  in  the  open,  and  it  is  not  till  that 
woman  dies  and  the  man  is  left  alone  that 
the  people  or  he  himself  knows  what  she 
has  been — for  Livingstone  is  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  but  his  wife's  grave 
is  in  the  African  forest. 

This  is  the  other  woman,  who  is  waste- 
ful, extravagant,  heedless,  who  is  jealous 
of  her  position  and  full  of  petty  social 
ambitions,  who  has  an  evil  or  garrulous 
tongue  and  creates  mischief  in  all  direc- 
tions, who  is  ignorant,  ill-mannered,  offen- 
sive, or  who  is  unbelieving  and  worldly. 
Such  a  woman  tied  to  a  minister  will  drive 
him  from  church  to  church,  bring  reproach 
upon  his  name  although  he  be  a  saint, 
undo  half  the  good  he  has  wrought,  and 
may  drag  him  down  to  her  own  level,  till 
he  grow  bitter,  grasping,  suspicious,  un- 
manageable. For  in  our  profession  a  man 
292 


THE    MINISTER'S    CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

may  double  or  divide  his  usefulness  by  his 
marriage. 

The  minister's  Household  has  a  fierce 
light  beating  upon  it,  and  must  be  so  gov- 
erned as  to  illustrate  the  Gospel  its  head 
preaches.  His  house  must  be  fair  and 
sweet,  like  George  Herbert's  parsonage, 
but  there  must  not  be  in  it  any  vain  show 
or  soft  luxury.  He  is  bound  to  show  hos- 
pitality as  becomes  Christ's  minister,  but 
with  love  and  simplicity.  His  children 
may  not  have  all  the  enjoyments  of  others, 
although  they  ought  to  be  heirs  of  peace, 
for  life  in  a  minister's  house  hath  a  certain 
severity.  If  the  minister  be  married  and 
have  children,  as  is  supposed,  then  he  is 
not  to  count  himself  different  from  other 
men  and  make  no  provision  for  their  main- 
tenance in  case  of  his  death.  It  is  his  duty 
to  set  by  a  sufficient  store  for  them,  that 
they  may  not  be  dependent  on  charity  ; 
and  should  he  be  tempted   to   say  that  he 

will  leave  them   penniless  to   the  care  of 

293 


THE    CURE    OF    SOULS 

God,  he  must  not  boast  of  his  faith,  but 
understand  that  he  is  worse  than  an  infidel. 
Few  things  alienate  sensible  men  more 
quickly  from  religion  than  a  minister  who 
does  not  pay  his  debts  or  consigns  his  chil- 
dren to  the  public.  And  the  minister  re- 
quires at  every  turn  to  deny  himself 
pleasu7'es  and  to  mortify  innocent  fancies 
lest  he  should  cast  a  stumbling-block  in  the 
way  of  timid  and  scrupulous  souls — who 
may  be  very  foolish,  but  for  whom  Christ 
was  willing  to  die.  As  the  minister  goeth 
before  on  the  steep  ascent,  he  must  re- 
member the  many  little  children  who  are 
following  and  plate  his  feet  in  plain  safe 
places. 

But  chiefly  this  man  must  have  regard 
to  his  soul,  that  it  may  be  pure  and  strong, 
and  unto  that  end  he  will  have  to  fight, 
as  against  all  sins  ;  so  especially  against 
three  which  do  most  easily  beset  ministers. 
The   first   is   laziness,  and   as,  in  a  day  of 

high  pressure  and   religious  fussing,  when 

294 


THE    MINISTER'S   CARE  OF  HIMSELF 

every  minister  is  supposed  to  be  working 
himself  to  death,  it  is  easy  to  make  a 
show  of  activity,  this  sin  is  very  insidious 
and  dangerous. 

The  minister  has  no  hour  at  which  he 
must  begin  work,  no  day  through  which 
he  is  kept  at  work,  no  check  which  shows 
how  much  work  he  has  done.  His  time 
is  at  his  disposal ;  his  work  is  his  own 
arranging,  he  is  his  own  master.  If  he 
chooses  to  idle  the  day  away  there  is  no 
one  to  call  him  to  account,  except  his 
wife,  and  she  will  delight  some  of  his 
brother  ministers  by  pleading  with  them 
to  induce  her  husband  not  to  study  so 
much  lest  he  injure  his  brain,  while  they 
know  he  does  not  do  two  hours'  honest 
study  in  the  week. 

[If  anything  could  rouse  a  sluggard  and 
move  him  to  play  the  man,  it  would  be 
his  wife's  faith  in  him.  All  over  the 
world,   within  and   without  the  ministry, 

hard-working  and    self-sacrificing   women 

295 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

are  covering  useless  vagabonds  and  apolo- 
gising for  their  faults,  and  assigning  them 
to  ill-health,  and  prophesying  the  great 
things  they  will  yet  do.  God  grant  the 
man  may  do  something  for  that  woman's 
sake.] 

When  the  minister  shuts  himself  up  in 
his  study  for  a  forenoon,  nobody  except 
himself  and  God  knows  whether  he  spent 
the  time  in  work  or  in  lazying  about 
from  one  book-shelf  to  another,  or  in 
smoking  over  the  newspaper,  or  in  read- 
ing the  last  novel.  He  goes  out  to  visit 
at  two  and  comes  home  at  six,  and  his 
wife  discovers  he  looks  tired,  and  suggests 
rest ;  but  he  may  have  spent  an  hour  in 
one  house — to  the  neglect  of  four  sick- 
rooms, where  he  was  anxiously  expected 
— because  the  people  were  agreeable  and 
allowed  him  to  speak  about  himself. 

It  is  possible  to  put  together  a  sermon 

in  a  few  hours — a  mere  thing  of  glue  and 

paint — which  will  please  the  eye  at  a  dis- 
296 


THE   MINISTER'S   CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

tance,  and  only  a  few  examine  any  sermon 
closely. 

[Ought  a  man  to  preach  an  old  sermon  ? 
Yes ;  if  (i)  it  be  a  good  one  ;  (2)  the  min- 
ister be  really  unable  to  produce  a  new 
one  ;  (3)  if  it  still  fit  him  so  that  he  can 
wear  it  comfortably.  For  sermons  are 
like  clothes,  the  suit  of  two  years  ago  is 
impossible  to-day — it  ought  to  be  too 
small] 

Laziness  grows  on  a  man,  and  eats  away 
his  morale  ;  he  is  ashamed  in  the  pulpit, 
and  full  of  apologies  in  houses,  till  at  last 
the  people — long-suffering  and  patient — 
lose  faith  in  him,  and  his  ministry  closes 
in  helplessness  and  contempt. 

The  second  sin  is  unmanliness,  which 
afflicts  many  ministers,  and  for  which  this 
excuse  can  be  made,  that  it  is  fostered  by 
their  circumstances.  It  is  dangerous  for 
any  man,  however  strong  and  modest  he 
may  be,  to  lay  down  the   law   twice  every 

Sunday  to  audiences  who  have  no  right  of 

297 


THE    CURE    OF   SOULS 

reply,  to  be  treated  with  special  respect  by 
the  majority  of  people  in  consequence  of 
his  office,  to  preside  frequently  over  com- 
mittees whose  members  are  inclined  to 
fall  in  with  his  ideas,  to  be  surrounded 
by  women  whose  piety  is  apt  to  make  too 
much  of  him  for  his  work's  sake.  Unless 
he  be  watchful  over  himself,  and  go  into 
the  world  and  meet  with  men  holding 
other  views  from  his,  and  have  faithful 
friends  to  criticise  and  brace  him,  he  will 
become  intolerant  of  opposition,  autocratic 
in  his  tone,  furious  if  resisted,  petted  if 
beaten — a  peevish  child.  If  a  man  has 
been  a  woman's  minister,  one  dare  not 
differ  from  him  on  the  weather. 

Another  corroding  and  deadening  sin  is 
professionalism,  which  shows  itself  in  an 
affected  tone  of  voice,  a  studied  manner,  a 
use  of  conventional  phrases,  and  an  unholy 
familiarity  with  spiritual  things.  When 
the  minister  of  Christ  falls  into  this  state 

of  soul,  it  is  a  woeful  tragedy.     Conceive 
298 


THE    MINISTER'S    CARE    OF    HIMSELF 

it  that  a  man  should  receive  infants  in 
the  name  of  Christ,  should  dispense  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  death,  should 
minister  by  the  bedside  of  the  dying, 
should  be  witness  of  the  supreme  conflicts 
of  the  soul,  should  carry  the  message  of 
the  Divine  Love,  should  intercede  for  the 
people  with  God,  should  live  and  work 
amid  sacred  mysteries — and  should  have 
lost  all  sense  of  their  awfulness,  their  love- 
liness, their  tenderness.  If  any  man  be 
able  to  leave  the  pulpit  without  fear,  or 
administer  a  sacrament  without  being  ex- 
hausted, or  return  from  seeing  one  of  his 
flock  pass  into  eternity,  and  plunge  into 
society,  then  he  may  well  ask  whether  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  has  not  forsaken  him,  and 
he  has  not  been  deposed  from  his  office 
by  the  Lord's  own  hands. 

Against  those  sins  and  every  other  the 
minister's  alone  protection  and  defence  is 
the  presence  of  the  Lord.     In  the  study  of 

a  very  fallible  and  unworthy  minister,  and 

299 


THE   CURE    OF   SOULS 

above  the  desk  where  he  writes  his 
sermons,  hangs  Andrea  Del  Sarto's  head 
of  Christ,  the  face  of  One  Whose  Passion 
is  over,  and  Who  is  now  ahve  for  ever- 
more, full  of  peace  and  majesty.  This 
minister  has  come  to  use  that  picture  as  a 
sacrament,  in  which  the  mind  of  the  Lord 
is  declared  to  his  heart  and  conscience  with 
secret  approvals  and  saving  judgments.  If 
he  consults  his  own  ease  and  refuses  some 
irksome  duty,  or  through  fear  of  man 
keeps  back  the  wholesome  truth,  then  is  the 
face  of  the  Master  clouded  with  sadness 
and  disappointment ;  if,  being  moved  by 
the  Divine  Grace,  that  minister  has  during 
the  day  humbled  himself  or  done  some  ser- 
vice at  a  cost  to  one  of  the  disciples,  then 
is  the  face  lit  up  with  joy,  and  the  eyes  of 
love  bid  him  welcome  on  his  return.  The 
Christ  is  not  in  the  poor  print  but  in  that 
minister  s  soul,  and  it  is  within  we  find  the 
Lord  before  Whom  at  every  moment  we 

stand  to  be  approved  or  condemned.     If 

300 


THE    MINISTERS   CARE  OF   HIMSELF 

God  give  us  success,  then  to  the  feet  of 
Jesus  let  our  sheaves  be  carried ;  if  it  be 
His  will  we  should  fail,  to  the  same  dear 
Lord  let  us  flee.  Who  knows  what  it  is  to 
see  His  life  fall  into  the  ground  and  dis- 
appear. From  His  words  let  us  learn  to 
preach  ;  from  His  example  let  us  learn  to 
serve  ;  in  His  communion  let  us  find  our 
strength,  comfort,  peace,  Whom  not  hav- 
ing seen  we  love,  to  Whom  we  shall  one 
day  render  our  account,  f? 


301 


Date  Due 

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